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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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Wtf is this "middle class" anyway? How do you define it? And where is the line?
The classes I learned from my schools and university is simpler: If you work, you are the worker. If you exploit the worker, you are a capitalist.
We never learned about classes in school. My son was taught explicitly that the US was not a class society. Class is a vibe.
Shorthand for middle class is whether someone owns or could "own" a house
What two red scares and a cold war does to a curriculum.
We never learned about classes either. We did learn about consumer segments, what papers they read and what brands of cigarettes they smoked.
Right, its interesting because a class (by this definition) is an affectation. Its a brand identity, it is a level of access that you can aspire to (or lose.)
Right, middle class is a nebulous idea that doesn't really have much meaning behind it. I agree that class membership derives its meaning from the relations in society. If majority of the income comes from the capital the individual owns then they're a member of the capitalist class, and if majority of their income comes from their labour then they're a member of the working class. These two classes have contradictory interests since capital owners act as employers of the workers.
"earners from between the 20th and 80th percentile"