Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
If you don't work with your hands but still need to work, you're middle class, no?
There's never been a middle class. The illusion of the "lazy poor" is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.
Yes there was.
In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.
Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.
Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million...
You are correct! And it's crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.
Weird how everything's turning to shit now that corporations don't pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.
"Too big to fail" was actually just "too big to stop." So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.
The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people's bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.
Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.
Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.
actually most middle class voters voted and supported for the policies that destroyed themselves.
they started deinvesting our healthcare and education systems in the 70s, often as a part of the backlash of civil rights and the economic stagnation of the 70s.
Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?
It was the people who didn't have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it's sustainability.
And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we're always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don't have a country.
themselves.
there is no billionaire conspiracy dude. the average person is stupid and regularly does stupid shit that defaults their long term interests for perceived short term gains. it's human nature. most people impulse spend on shit they don't need or really want, but their monkey brain wants it because other monkey has it.
the few people who can value their long term gains at the expense of the short term tend to be those that are upwardly mobile economically.
-
The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).
-
In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.
You're right, but that's not middle class--that's working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of "middle" class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.
There is no middle-class. There is the working class and the aristocrats.
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. Millionaires are closer to zero than they are the ultra rich.
There is no middle class. There are only working class and wealth class. Just because you are high earner in an office job doesn't mean you're not working class.
how expensive it is to be poor
For anyone that needs the read, Terry Pratchett said it so well it is an economic theory now, the Boots theory.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.[4]
From Men at Arms by Sir Terry Pratchett
Also, a history of "people don't want to work" bullshit going back to 1894: https://thunderdungeon.com/2024/07/14/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore/
They also don't understand that the impact of the "lazy poor" is exaggerated by the rich to turn your attention away from The Big Theft.
"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." - James Baldwin
No truer words.
Middle class IS below the poverty line.
The poverty line is a number made up by the wealthy to keep the "less poors" at odds with the "more poors" So that we don't join forces and guillotine the motherfuckers.
Because middle class is used wrong in North America.
Poverty class is simple, you don't have enough to live.
Labor class is divided into three;
Low labor, your barely paid enough to scrape by.
Middle labor, your paid enough for your work to live.
High labor, you're paid well for your work. Perhaps you own your own small business.
Middle class, you aren't paid a wage or salary anymore, you're income comes from the things you own. As rich as a politician or nobility but not much political power.
Upper class, in old Europe this would be the nobels. Duke's, Earls, Lords, that type of stuff. In modern north America this would be the ultra rich. You have political power and you own a lot of stuff. This is where most representatives are.
Politician class, former Royal class. You rule, extreme political power and wealth.
Most people in North America think they're in the middle class when really they're in the Labor middle class, it's very different
Working class is everybody who must work to live.
Wealth class is everybody else.
There is no such thing as a middle class, that is a lie. Everybody seems to think they're in the middle class, because that puts somebody below them, and gives them a reason to continue working under wage slavery. This is the purpose of the lie.
Yeah, I think people who say that don't realize a few key things.
First, they don't understand the 'poverty tax' - how not having money for things like a security deposit, reliable transportation, or bulk buying actually costs you more in the long run.
And second, they don't see how thin the margin for error is for most middle-class families. One medical bill or job loss is all it takes to fall behind.
There is no true definition of middle class. People making only $30k a month consider themselves middle class and people making $1 million also think they are middle class.
There's the Working class, who can't live in society without trading their time for money in some way, or being given charity. And the Capital class, who can live in society without doing either.
It's really hard to even decide what middle class is. I have a good job, good benefits, savings and retirement account, but if I lost my job we'd be homeless in 6 months.