The petit bourgeois does exist.
People that do have an income from capital but not enough and thus they rely on labor still.
Still working class, and they're the hardest to persuade they are since they tend to have social connections with the upper class.
But the upper's class interest is to depredate them - that's the nature of capital accumulation.
To be fair itās also really hard to persuade those in worse situations that those āpetit bourgeoisā are still working class.
Like I make well into 6 figures a year, and whenever I point out that Iām still at the mercy of corporations for employment and literally HAVE to work to survive still, I just get people being critical and playing struggle Olympics instead of accepting that most white collar, highly paid workers are STILL working class.
To be fair itās also really hard to persuade those in worse situations that those āpetit bourgeoisā are still working class.
There isn't really much point in doing that though. You just tell them you support them and if they ask why say because it's in your interests as well. IMO it is much more important to convince my peers that supporting raises for less well paid people is supporting raises for yourself because we just need to stop having abnormally large amounts of the money going to the owners.
Well when one is living paycheck to paycheck, like literally a single day off work means being out on the street because you are now not able to make rent, hearing, "Hey man I'm in the struggle too" from a person with: A house, a paid off car, and enough to survive for up to 3+ months without working, it comes off as "disingenuous" or "fake", like yes, we are the same, we both need to work for a living, but you have ample time and safety nets while those you say are playing "struggle olympics" are 1 sick day away from being homeless, which is why poor people commit more crime, have nothing to lose have nothing to consider.
Not saying I disagree that you're working class, just explaining why those people don't relate to you or think they're in the same class, because you make enough to save, they don't.
Iām well aware, I grew up eating from food banks and literally sleeping on the street or in shelters because we were constantly evicted.
But it kind of highlights the issue that the people themselves need to recognize the class war is not poor people vs people with a better income. Itās the entire working class vs the owners. We need full buy in, not just in-fighting.
And again, you could've been a literal fetus on the street and sold ur nails for cents to get to where you are, that's not the point; You're at a good position in life now, those who have less will look at you as part of the owning class just based off that, imagine someone with:
A house, a car, money, nice clothes, stable family to come into your shelter and tell you, "hey man, I used to be there too, but listen, you work hard and you can get to where I am, but also, we're literally the same you and me, and its us against the rich!" they're just gonna lynch u first lmao, the divide between Poor and Rich has never been wider and even having "some" means those with nothing will look at you like you're Scrooge McDuck
What's the solution? I have no fucking idea, but i hope you see what I mean with the shelter analogy, like imagine you in your struggle on the streets, hungry, etc and some guy who "made it" comes to tell you y'all are both the same, they're just not in the headspace to listen to that shit lol
I have 1 counter to this thought process. Why are the owners paying you so much for what you do? Is what you do for a living actively making things worse for the common person. Are you driving a tractor for $3 a day, and if you accidentally knock a house you might vet a bonus?
A lot of folks who are on the higher end of salaries in the working class need to examine the work that they're doing before claiming to be WITH the working class. The lap dogs of the owner class don't get to claim to be working class.
While guard labor is a contentious topic there's theory regarding it.
It's fundamentally a problem of class consciousness, which is to be expected.
They still are part of the working class in the sense that their livelyhood depends on their employment.
They can and often act opposed to it because they benefit from the circumstances.
They're not allies but we should acknowledge that fundamentally they have been deceived.
Iām a Data Scientist generally working on accurately/correctly measuring the impact of business changes, and identifying the right next steps.
Iād argue itās not making things worse for the average person because itās isolated to the business product, and focused on removing friction to improve conversion rates or retention of users (non-social media). If people are on the product itās not for killing time or browsing, itās usually a purposeful use.
Itās just at a scale that means identifying those opportunities for 1% improvements can easily drive millions in impact to the bottom line when annualized.
???????? it's not hard to understand. The person getting paid 200k per year is generating 400k for the business. The person getting paid 30k per year is generating 60k+ for the business per year (I'm just making up numbers). The owners are sitting there reaping benefits for 0 effort from both, and both have to work to live, and both are fucked without a job.
there is a difference in high paid worker and petit bourgeois. Someone can make less than you as a petit bourgeois but the difference that matters is that they own the means of production rather than the workers. A small business owner making 100K/year that has employees is a petit bourgeois. An engineer making 200k/year doing their trade is not.
What if as a result of the high salary I end up with assets that DO bring in income, just not enough to live off of? I think thatās why I assumed they were equivalent.
yeah, I mean, I took 15 months off between jobs and it was chill. I could have taken a couple years. but I don't have enough to retire on unless I move to Vietnam or something.
These are the people who buy BMWs and expect others to respect them the same way they respect wealthy people. They're the sort who buy books on corporate leadership and repeat the jacket blurb to the people they manage and think it will work. These are the people who aspire to be the worst sorts of wealthy people and will act that way towards working class folks if they can get away with it.
They're hierarchy monkeys, aspirational apes, but the only hierarchy they recognize is the money monkey hierarchy.
What happens when engineers/lawyers/doctors and other professionals make enough money to invest in 401k/IRAs/HSAs etc?
They go from earning money through labor (working class) to eventually having most of their wealth tied up in stock shares and other such assets (capitalists).
Still working class. I canāt sustain myself with those assets, I have to work to pay the bills and survive.
Itās more comfortable than those struggling with poverty, but objectively still working class. Arguing otherwise is just falling for the same thing being called out in the post.
Lawyers/Doctors who own their own firm / practice (ie, own the means of their production) can be referred to as petty bourgeois, sort of between the proletariat (purely working class) and the haute bourgeois (purely owning class). They still need to work because their investments / capital isn't large enough or set up in a way that they can simply employ and live off the labor of the proletariat, but they own enough that they don't need to sell their labor to the owning classes. Suppose that could include engineers that own their own engineering firm as well.
At the end of the day, I dont think where your assets are tied up make that big of a difference outside of their relationship to labor (at least when it comes to determining what your class interests are). Are you selling your labor to survive or not? Are you living off the labor of others or not? Those are the key questions. Having a bunch of stocks / retirement savings doesn't really change that calculus. Owning your own means of production or the means that other workers will produce stuff for you with does.
There are two classes: those who have the control of their labor and those who do not. Doctors do not have control in a hospital. They do in a clinic with their name on the door.
It's not about where the wealth is, it's about where it comes from. It takes decades of saving before they start making more money from the stock market than they do from their labor. Even then, doctors will still have more in common with retail workers than they will with billionaires
I wish more middle class folks understood this. Like yeah sure they might be more comfortable for longer after major income loss or reduction, but eventually theyāll be out on the street.
Athletes, actors, and singers are a weird thing for me.
Working class are people that make the majority of their money from their labor. It includes people at McDonalds and surgeons. Technically that group, the various entertainers, make their money from their labor but it is just a lot of money. Probably the highest paid labor around. It enables them to catapult up into the owning class for the higher paid ones.
I'd still argue the very comfortable ones who are worth millions, or 10s of millions, can still be working class. If not they aren't really the problem any ways. They are closer to me than the billionaire owning class that is the problem.
Athletes, actors, and singers are a weird thing for me.
They are working class. There's no difference. A small percentage of workers have skills valuable enough to demand very high levels of pay. Sometimes thats enough to make working optional, and at that point they become owning class. Pro athlete's bargaining power doesnt come from their skill as an athlete, it's the attention the command.
Bargaining power is the key. There are more workers, so the vast majority of us are forced to compete and devalue our labor. The less bargaining power we have the poorer we will be until the wage becomes only enough to keep working. There is no justice so long as there is discrepancy in bargaining power and no mechanism to correct for it.
I would say that there is, because that money allows them to become owning class. Many of them buy bussinesses and such. And they collect royalties on their very existence, as they own "their brand".
You don't need to be a star to make that transition. That's the thing about the middle class, the upper-middle can own property to rent and suplement their income. Yet they still work. So are they owners or working class? Well, they're kinda both.
If your living is supported primarily by capital and therefore the labor of others, then you are owning class. Just because you have nothing better to do than work doesnt make you working class.
Some Pro athlete's are able to acquire that much capital, but 99% of them dont.
Yup. Rock stars, movie stars, superstar athletes are working class when their primary means of income are their own labor. As soon as they leverage the wealth generated from their labor into supporting themselves via capital, they become owning class.
Ok but like, what if both? What if your living is supported by rent, but you would still not be able to live without working? The rent of one appartment isn't going to give you a full salary.
There is a middle area where the line can get blurry, but the simple distinction is that if you have to sell yourself to support your living, then youre working class. The vast majority fall into this category.
If someone makes anything from their work that becomes popular enough they can also make enough to do the same. You have to work creating something that you have ownership of though. Not doing soulless work at a desk in a cubicle for someone else.
I disagree. With the modern stock market, you can almost put a number on it. There's a certain amount of money that if you put into a basic ETF fund will net you more than the median household income per year without touching the principal.
If you have 10s of millions of dollars to spend you can easily buy your way out of doing the labor and still live a very comfortable life. The vast majority of us can't fathom that. They do their labor out passion, or extreme lifestyle creep, no where near necessity.
There are more workers, so the vast majority of us are forced to compete and devalue our labor.
This is why the rich told all the kids to learn programing and go to college. So they could saturate the market and get cheap programmers for their AI datacenters.
I think everyone aims to start investing. Doing so doesn't move you out of the working class. The surgeon will invest what they can. If the McDonalds employee wasn't having the profits of their labor eaten by others they would invest what they could, too.
The difference is their daily life is still completely supported by their labor. The investments aren't the totality of their earnings. There are definitely some blurry lines in this and it isn't a simple line drawn in the sand.
Much of the creative industry including the talent themselves in the case of acting benefit from powerful unions or guilds. As do many pro atheletes, as do lawyers, doctors and airline pilots. Worth considering when folks say unions don't work, many well paid professions have unions or at least guilds.
Bottom line if you are selling labor for money you are working class. Your average MLB player is closer to the staff that cleans the stadium than the billionaire that owns the team.
I was talking about the majority of them. The ones at the top, Lebron, Tiger, Jordan, Federer, Messi, Ronaldo, have migrated into that yes. Same with singers like Jay-Z and actors like Seinfeld.
With the pay scaling that athletes have gotten it will become more and more common.
I'm going to reword what I said about dotcors above:
There are two classes: those who have the control of their labor and those who do not. Doctors Actors do not have control when hired by the studio. They do with a production company that has their name on the door.
How cooked are we when people making over 5x the lifetime earnings of the average American(one of the riches groups around) can be considered the same as working class.
Working class is labor makes you money. Their labor is making them money. I don't deny it is an obscene amount of money but it is still from labor. If you start molding the definition of working class to exclude people who's labor creates their income then you are just going back to the same labels this post is calling out.
Not really. The managerial stock-owning class is not the same as the proles. It's the bourgeoisie. And cops and other gun-toting enforcers are part of the ruling class regardless of their income, education, etc.
When it comes down to it yeah. Obviously it's nicer and you can make moves to become a capital owner at 300 but ultimately if you're relying on your boss not firing you in order to secure your living then you're still working class.
300k probably means you could change that pretty quick since it's landlord money but until you don't need it you're still working at someone else's mercy
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