Middle Class: Innocent in Class Warfare

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Depends on the details. "Owning stock in Google" is not quite the same as "owning an apartment building" or "owning a factory". "Stock in Google" is an abstraction, not physical wealth.

Probably middle class. I'd need to know more details. What kind of work? Mr. Khosla, the venture capitalist I referred to in the other thread probably thinks he ...[text shortened]... What physical objects and resources can you make the police withhold from the market?

My point is that most people belong to both classes and so making this out as some sort of class struggle is meaningless.

Originally posted by sh76
My point is that most people belong to both classes and so making this out as some sort of class struggle is meaningless.

Most people only belong to the capitalist class in a very peripheral way. A few shares of Google stock doesn't buy admittance to the club.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
It has everything to do with class warfare. It's instinctive. None of this intellectual collectivist Communist crap that the elites use to snare gullible but angry "useful idiots".

This is American style. He is a career criminal. Early on he decided to say "F* YOU!!!" to "society" and "the Man". Like they say in East L.A., he don't fake it, h ...[text shortened]... oesn't deserve it.

I'm sure he has lots of connections with impoverished people.

Now you're just being a goofball. The proletariat don't like being mocked!

Originally posted by sh76
My point is that most people belong to both classes and so making this out as some sort of class struggle is meaningless.

Not really meaningless. It is argued on one hand that Marx failed to anticipate the extent to which the working classes would find political ways to secure a better share of the wealth created through their own labour. On the other hand it is argued that wealthy countries buy off their own population but export poverty to other parts of the world - so that it is the Third World that bears the harshest burden and serves as the "reserve army of labour," fear of which helps to discipline the productive workers.

In any case Marx was concerned with the way Capital has a logic of its own by which wealth, generated through the productive labour of the many, becomes concentrated in the hands of the few. It is a slow and inaccurate process with leakage that benefits productive workers, but look at the extent to which the top 1% to 5% of the World's population has ownership of a phenomenal proportion of the total wealth in the world to appreciate how the remainder are left struggling for the scraps in an unequal fight. Look at the way a few companies manage to dominate each market despite some effort to control monopolies and permit some competition to survive. Those huge companies tolerate competition only to the extent that they are obliged to. Among ordinary people, life is harsh and highly competitive - just to survive in most cases.

The struggle is not primarily about people individually, who are often very nice and very worthy in their own way, but about the power of Capital itself, the way it poisons everything around it.

Originally posted by finnegan
Not really meaningless. It is argued on one hand that Marx failed to anticipate the extent to which the working classes would find political ways to secure a better share of the wealth created through their own labour. On the other hand it is argued that wealthy countries buy off their own population but export poverty to other parts of the world - so tha ...[text shortened]... heir own way, but about the power of Capital itself, the way it poisons everything around it.

The richest 1% owning a large % is not an evil in and of itself, as long as the others have plenty too. I'd rather have the richest be filthy rich and the middle class and poor be comfortable than everybody be equally miserable.

Originally posted by sh76
The richest 1% owning a large % is not an evil in and of itself, as long as the others have plenty too. I'd rather have the richest be filthy rich and the middle class and poor be comfortable than everybody be equally miserable.

False dilemma. You don't need economic oligarchy to have a healthy economy.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
False dilemma. You don't need economic oligarchy to have a healthy economy.

I think the middle class is one of the biggest problems in this country. They think they deserve to live like the rich but when asked to shoulder more of the country's fiscal burden, they are suddenly "just barely making ends meet."

Plus the middle-class robs a lot of the transfers that could be going to the poor.

Disclaimer: obviously not everyone of middle-class means fits this description, but many do and incendiary language is more fun.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Then how come poor people keep getting shot by cops in defense of rich peoples' capital?

EDIT - E.g.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/26259026/detail.html

POSTED: 12:57 pm CST December 23, 2010
UPDATED: 12:19 am CST December 24, 2010

Police said Charles K. Glover, 37, robbed two Fifth Third banks on Thursday. One of the banks was on Donelson P ...[text shortened]... he scene, and he didn't have a gun, police said in a news release Thursday evening.

rich people are putting their money into Podunks outside Nashville?

Originally posted by telerion
I think the middle class is one of the biggest problems in this country. They think they deserve to live like the rich but when asked to shoulder more of the country's fiscal burden, they are suddenly "just barely making ends meet."

Plus the middle-class robs a lot of the transfers that could be going to the poor.

Disclaimer: obviously not everyo ...[text shortened]... of middle-class means fits this description, but many do and incendiary language is more fun.

i think we should buy some poor African country like Liberia or Zimbabwe and give our poor free one-way tickets to it.

the challenge of raising their own food should firm them up and make them better people.

noting also that this country suffers from too many bureaucrats and economists, we should deport as many of these ilk to our new territory as possible.

Originally posted by telerion
I think the middle class is one of the biggest problems in this country. They think they deserve to live like the rich but when asked to shoulder more of the country's fiscal burden, they are suddenly "just barely making ends meet."

Plus the middle-class robs a lot of the transfers that could be going to the poor.

Disclaimer: obviously not everyo ...[text shortened]... of middle-class means fits this description, but many do and incendiary language is more fun.

"The country's fiscal burden" exists because of stupid capitalists, not the middle class.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Then how come poor people keep getting shot by cops in defense of rich peoples' capital?

EDIT - E.g.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/26259026/detail.html

POSTED: 12:57 pm CST December 23, 2010
UPDATED: 12:19 am CST December 24, 2010

Police said Charles K. Glover, 37, robbed two Fifth Third banks on Thursday. One of the banks was on Donelson P ...[text shortened]... he scene, and he didn't have a gun, police said in a news release Thursday evening.

If you move north across the border you'll find much less of that happening. Why do you think that might be? Canadians are more adept at waging class warfare?

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
If you move north across the border you'll find much less of that happening. Why do you think that might be? Canadians are more adept at waging class warfare?

Low population density.

Originally posted by sh76
The richest 1% owning a large % is not an evil in and of itself, as long as the others have plenty too. I'd rather have the richest be filthy rich and the middle class and poor be comfortable than everybody be equally miserable.

I thought that research that (I think it was no1) was posted a while ago was quite interesting - most Americans think the poor should get a larger % of all wealth (though of course they don't think it should be spread equally), even though their own estimate of how much the poor currently own is several orders of magnitude off!

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Low population density.

Irrelevant, a similar percentage lives in urban areas. Try again.

Hint: it's not gun ownership.