this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Late Stage Capitalism

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[–] huey_m@reddthat.com 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Look, I'm not saying I agree, and I'd turn pretty much all companies into worker cooperatives tomorrow if I could, but the reality is the median American disposable income is ridiculously high compared to most countries (if I recall right, only Luxembourg compares, which, I mean...). Inequality is also ridiculous, and there are also a lot more in extreme poverty, but they tend not to be as politically active (because being in poverty is fucking exhausting, been there). But the middle class, which tends to be more politically active, still has way, way more wiggle room than the middle class in most other places. It takes a lot more economic pressure to pinch them hard enough to take action.

The fact is if you're poor, the US is financially an awful place to be while (most of) Europe is pretty tolerable, but a middle class American generally has way more money in their pocket (even accounting for things like health care) than nearly any other country's middle class. There's a reason a lot of young professionals from Europe go to America for 5 years or so to build up a nest egg to bring back to Europe... salaries for the same positions are usually way lower here and advancement is usually harder compared to the US (again, talking about professional work here). My wife is in middle management and can literally make about 4-5x what she makes in our country in the US... while things like rent and healthcare would take a larger % of our income, our total dollars saved at the end of the year would be way, way higher in the US (we've both lived and worked in the US in the past).

None of this should be read as an endorsement of the US system, I'm personally a socialist that would see worker co-ops required by law, and as someone who has moved from real poverty into the middle class, I'd gladly take a reduction in income to ensure my neighbors aren't on the street trying to find enough to eat, I don't believe in shutting the door after yourself... but it does explain why there isn't as much clamor to change it as people might expect. The unpopular truth here is we're a very biased sample here and the wider middle class in the US is actually doing pretty well globally. People don't like it, but it usually takes real economic pressure to get people into the streets.

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Seriously, what should I do as an individual to singlehandedly change this?

Not in a fedposting get-you-to-incriminate-yourself way, I'm genuinely asking what you expect me to do, one person out of nearly 400 million

I'm fucking trying, I'm doing everything I can in my rented apartment and my shitbox from the '90s

Who the fuck is the target audience for this on Lemmy, Europeans glazing each other because they did their imperialism before the internet existed?

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I killed seven obscenely wealthy people last week and ate their flesh to redistribute their wealth. Pretty sure that's how it works. Even if it isn't, it can't hurt for us to all give it our best shot.

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Okay you can't just say that online and not share recipes

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Nothing to share, sadly. Obscenely wealthy humans are so rotten inside nothing can make them taste good. With the possible exception of MacKenzie Scott. I can't be sure, but I'd be willing to test. For science.

... like, without the murder. On that one. Just sex stuff. No combining sex stuff with murder and nightmares, or we will become like them.

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This week, each one of you has a homework assignment. You're gonna go out, you're gonna talk to a coworker about pay. You're gonna tell to a coworker how much you get paid even if that's cringe.

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 hours ago

Unfortunately, even thinking the word "solidarity" is grounds for termination here

[–] wakko@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

And yet, people still think the top tier earners deserve to live in houses with unbroken windows and unburnt lawns...

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 17 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

This is a worldwide problem, not just a US one.

The world needs to collectively make these people's vast accumulation of wealth and thus power illegal. Old and new money regardless of where it came from.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Japan has very little wealth inequality.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

True, but most of the world has it.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

Not entirely true, socialist countries do exist and are undermining this system.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Americans? It's fucking planet Earth (share your country and I'll demonstrate)

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

I've always said this, the Americans who ended the gilded age and elected the Roosevelts will be rolling in their graves after seeing how spineless their descendants have been.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It's not about spine, it's about the system. There is currently no mechanism to change this, even if we wanted to, which we generally do. We have to change the system first, so that a change in how we handle Sociopathic Oligarchs is possible.

And frankly, we're working hard on that. We've got a Midterm Election coming up that Dems have been working very hard to exploit as much as possible (for a change), and more than that, the people who are running and winning primaries are the kind that are going to insist on substantial changes when they get in office, starting with leadership. If the Dems take the Senate, Schmuck is out as leader, and then out of his office in 2028.

When we change the profile of the party, take control of Congress, then change the leadership, we are on the path to make bigger changes that can have a real impact.

[–] mineralfellow@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Reading the graph, it looks like the bottom 50% have about $4T. A quick glance at the wealthiest 5 individuals shows that they have about $2T.

Not good.

[–] K1nsey6@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You left a 9 out of the 1% figure

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

I think they were highlighting a different fact, which is that simply 5 people, not the 0.1%, have almost as much as the bottom 50%.

[–] grandma@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 day ago (4 children)
[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 15 points 23 hours ago

Capital consolidates in crisis. Each crisis, which is fairly regular in capitalism, results in the bigger capitalists buying or squeezing out the smaller capitalists that cannot weather the crisis, resulting in greater centralization and consolidation of capital, and greater absolute disparity.

[–] Karjalan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Kind of weird that it somehow made the rich richer...

[–] BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Man, seeing this graph that was a literal inflection point where their wealth exploded compared to a literal decade before.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

If you zoom out, these jumps and explosions happen following nearly every crisis. It's intrinsic to capitalism.

[–] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 7 points 1 day ago

Never let a good crisis go to waste they say

[–] diocesegoldmine@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

It's easy to call us cowards, in reality we live in a surveillance state that makes trillions of dollars by killing and torturing it's own citizens. In a place like this lacking morals becomes a question of survival. Definitely not excusing it, but it's the truth.

[–] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, they've also been brainwashed into extreme individualism, "if you fail at life it's your fault" kind of thinking. The fact that losing your job means homelessness, no healthcare, and with extremely powerful corporations handling pretty much everything you do or own makes it incredibly hard to organise.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Revolutionaries have succeeded in worse conditions, like Russia, China, Cuba, etc. The reality is that a good portion of the US Empire's working classes are bribed by the spoils of imperialism, and that there is a huge settler population that benefit from settler-colonialism. Organizing in the US needs to primarily be from a decolonial and anti-imperialist standpoint, which is largely why the Black Panther Party was so successful in garnering support, along with the mutual aid and community defense they performed.

A lot of the Black Panther Party was inspired by global south movements, including juche socialism from the DPRK, and Mao's policy in China. They focused on independence, sovereignty, and self-reliance, which is why their community defense and free lunch programs were so critical to their strategy. They believed that they needed to correctly show the working classes how to properly be a disciplined, working class party, bringing them up to their level theoretically and practically.

[–] volore@scribe.disroot.org 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

that, and none of the people who so flippantly dismiss us all as cowards have ever seriously considered the realities of spending considerable time in the American penal system, our favorite way of breaking people who color outside the lines. They're usually people from countries where prison is a place of rehabilitation and not punishment.

Everyone wants to see another Luigi, nobody wants to go through the kind of grief he is going or will go through.

[–] Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

I guess it was easier in Nazi Germany to keep your head down and go with the flow, too.

Don't worry, people don't forget!

[–] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 day ago (14 children)

No, just last week 250 comrades were arrested from a sister group of ours in Turkey.

Turkish prisons are not very pleasant. But when you have something to strive for, you do what is right and not what is easy.

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[–] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The problem is not that you are cowards, the problem is that you are stupid cowards.

You don't organize, you don't know how to either. And yeah going to prison sucks but that is true for the whole world.

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

There’s just very little solidarity. I’m from the US, and I didn’t realize it was missing until I moved to a country where it’s normal. Nobody trusts others to have their back, so why would they risk anything?

That said, it looks like it’s slowly developing. Ten years ago, I would not have expected Minnesotans to en masse refuse to help ice agents caught in the snow, for example. That may be because of my own ignorance, but in my home state of Connecticut there is a group of insurance professionals (not your local brokers, more like actuaries and people who work at the insurance company headquarters-not a group inherently predisposed to solidarity with immigrants) who coordinate shopping for local immigrants.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

Ah yes, the old raped, dead husk of the stock market still working for the rich.

[–] MrRandom@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago

It's easy when no one is preventing bribery

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's (ass all other bullshit the USA does) probably coming to the EU too, just some years later

It's not distinctly a USA problem and has been a world wide problem with the start colonization.

[–] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Always hard to interpret these bottom procentile numbers because a certain procentile has 0 wealth or negative wealth. A quick search says 25% of Americans have 0 or negative wealth. I myself have negative wealth because I recently graduated and I have student loans. A homeless guy with 0 debt and 1 dollar in his pocket therefore can be said to be wealthier than 25% of Americans, and myself. However my quality of life is very good with an above average wage. And I can be expected to start going into positive net wealth later in life as I start paying off those student loans.

I would love to see numbers in lifetime wealth generation or something similar that would take into account that a lot of people are understably at 0 or negative wealth at early points of their life. Otherwise I have a hard time interpreting these bottom procentile numbers. Makes for great headlines though!

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You make the assumption that negative wealth is okay when you're young.

I don't agree with that.

Some say that time is wasted on the young. They have so much of it that they don't know what to do with it. I say that wealth is wasted on old people, for the same reason.

A society should invest in young people. They spend the money back into the system and shape the future they have to live in by how they spend it. Old people do none of that. They just tuck it away, and clutch their pearls.

I'm grateful to live in a society that has welfare to pay young people to study, so they don't start their lives in debt. I hardly used it myself, but I'm still happy to pay my taxes knowing that our society has raised the bar so that nobody is forced into negative wealth just to get their life started. Poverty is low, homelessness is low, education is high. This is the society that I want to live in and pay for.

Some would call it socialism. It's not really, and it isn't perfect, but whatever it is, it's surely better than a casino where the house always wins, also known as the American Dream.

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