There isn't class warfare only because of the hopelessness of the situation. The poor have foregone hope.

No one should be poor in a nation this wealthy, but we aren't really a nation -- not in the most meaningful sense of the word.

And, yes, a big part of the joy of being elite is to have as many people beneath you suffering as much as possible; that's what gives your privilege substance. Of course they don't want us to be happy. The goal is to keep us only as subjugated as humanly possible without a revolution.

Lift us up, put us down, lift us up, put us down. And we're so saturated with media bliss, we don't even realize how wrong it is that so many of us truly live lives of fear and desperation. We feel alone; everyone else is happy. Most people are so desperate to be positive, because they want so badly to escape their personal hell, they'll even convince themselves everything is okay.

But yeah, this is no nation. We're divided at the core of what makes us human. For the people at the top, "America" is just PR. They feel no allegiance to this country (which is its people, not its resources.)

To give the devil his due, my hunch is it (discrimination against the poor) isn't intentional/deliberate - it can be likened to crime, but not organized crime if you catch my drift.

Again, like I've always said, the flaw is in the system and not the people. Can you blame people for taking bribes if their salaries/pay ain't enough to make ends meet?

It's totally intentional. You don't understand society if you think it's not. The poorer we are, the richer they feel. And they don't want to help: it's not on their agenda. It would be so easy to help, but, being the society of Karens that we are, there's no such thing as a free meal.

I mean, golly gee, what would happen if some dickhead had a home. Pretty soon everybody would be dickheads and we'd have to help them all. We'd go broke.

there is some kind of "class warfare" going on — dclements

"The only war is the class war." The rich get richer by making the people poorer.

Workers create wealth through the various processes of their labor. The owners collect a portion of the worker-created wealth and keep it. The workers retain enough to maintain themselves, but not enough to become (even remotely) rich.

What about social and economic mobility?

There is some social and economic mobility in capitalist countries within the working class. Education, skill acquisition, brains, luck, hard work, thrift, and cooperative financial institutions can enable one to move up the economic ladder, but only a few get from the working class into the top tier of wealth. Home equity is one way many families have achieved upward economic mobility. However, there are numerous social and economic institutions making that upward mobility possible.

Post-1930s depression-era legislation and post-WWII programs created a lot of the opportunities that enabled many families to accumulate wealth. Without billions invested in road and infrastructure construction, without billions made available to finance the suburban boom (in the 1950s and 1960s), without FHA and VA loans, without expanded college education opportunities, a lot of upward mobility wouldn't have happened.

We like upward mobility, but there is also downward mobility, a less cheerful topic.

"There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."
~Warren Buffet (2006)

Interview 2015:


and Thomas Piketty (synopsis)



I'm an economic democrat, so ... :mask:

You only just worked this out?

there is some kind of "class warfare" going on — dclements

You only just worked this out? — Banno

Yeah... some of us have been caught up and fighting in this protracted conflict for some decades. :pray:

You only just worked this out? — Banno

It has become more apparent as the working poor have lost their economic power, and the social welfare gains of the C20th are rolled back. But don't worry, it's all going to get much worse.

Another day a government failure, another call for the government to fix it. By now we’ve relinquished so much social power, and converted what little responsibilities we used to share with one another into state responsibilities, that I fear it’s too late to do anything about it. So far gone are we that we now pretend voting for this-or-that politician or this-or-that piece of legislation is tantamount helping The Poor, even though politics and charity are wildly divergent activities.

The problem with the class war idea is that it isn’t true, and worse, pegs as good or evil one who may be the opposite—it’s unjust. Better to approach the blame game on an individual basis, to witness if one helps the poor or not, rather than making such determinations from which tax bracket or party they occupy. I wager you’d be surprised.

The problem with the class war idea is that it isn’t true, and worse, pegs as good or evil one who may be the opposite—it’s unjust. — NOS4A2

The idea of class war need not demonize the rich but only describe a tendency of the rich to maintain their luxuries and privileges at the expense of outsiders. Indeed, the poor are often encouraged to emulate the class consciousness of the rich. One way to clean my own room as a shrewd prole is to form free associations with other such proles and do what the rich do, team up explicitly in order to better squeeze politicians for tax money, protections, and privileges.

Class war is very real and very damaging to the world. Don’t pay attention to those who pretend it doesn’t exist — they’re unwitting puppets for pure tyranny. Always have been.

I speculate that @NOS4A2 embraces some kind of Randian ideology, conveniently ignoring the capture of the government by the rich. When bombs to drop on strangers are needed, tax money is easy to find or just print. When health care or housing or education is needed, how are we supposed to pay for it?

Eating just one billionaire would do more for climate change than going vegan or never driving a car for the rest of your life. — Meme

:snicker:

:up:

The idea of class war need not demonize the rich but only describe a tendency of the rich to maintain their luxuries and privileges at the expense of outsiders. Indeed, the poor are often encouraged to emulate the class consciousness of the rich. One way to clean my own room as a shrewd prole is to form free associations with other such proles and do what the rich do, team up explicitly in order to better squeeze politicians for tax money, protections, and privileges.

Collectivism in a nutshell. Make hasty generalizations and form a politics around it.

"Collectivism" as if it's a bad word. Lol.

Collectivism in a nutshell. Make hasty generalizations and form a politics around it. — NOS4A2

Randianism in a nutshell ? Connect everything to the demon collectivism ? We are social animals trying to work out how to thrive together. A ruling class that gluts itself while the system rots is like a brain tumor. It's nothing but superstition to treat private property as eternally sacred.

The conceit is in the idea that so long as you can form a ruling class of your proles all will be right and well. Of course, this idea has ruined every society it has touched. So much for thriving together.

Anti-social personalities generally view doing anything with others as evil, raising “individualism” to the level of fundamentalist dogma, matched only by their faith in markets. They’ll forever rail against unions and governments while keeping quiet about corporate power, for one reason: they prefer tyranny. Why? They imagine themselves as in charge.

It’s nothing other than dressed up justification for greed, the hatred of democracy and, generally, human beings. Who knows how or why they acquired this sick outlook — I suspect early experiences and heavy brainwashing.

Not worth getting too worked up about. Leave them to their pathologies.

Sounds about right.

Not worth getting too worked up about. Leave them to their pathologies. — Xtrix

Except they too often get elected.

Except they too often get elected. — Banno

It does seem to be the ruling ideology. But I think that’s changing as the people become angrier with the state of things. Most are lashing out in silly ways, to the point of electing clowns because they say they like them.

I guess it means we gotta try harder to educate people and listen to them.

Anyway, I was mostly talking about people in this forum.

Most are lashing out in silly ways, to the point of electing clowns because they say they like them. — Xtrix

I think they are electing clowns because clowns appear not to be a product of the system viewed as hopeless, broken and corrupt. A clown like Trump has the right populist enemies (regardless of his real status as a cunt). The cult of 'everything is fucked' is lubricant for demagogues. :wink:

Anyway, I was mostly talking about people in this forum. — Xtrix

Those who would posit Stalin as a leading light of the left? And who think that the solution to poverty is charity?

And who are against unions because they had a bad experience in one once?

Yeah, something like that.

I'm not sure but the days of making big money through exploitation are over i.e. the rich-poor gap is increasing alright but by other, more benign, more honorable, methods. What these are is currently beyond me, but the bottom line is the rich have nothing to be ashamed of, conversely the poor have nothing to complain about! :snicker:

A clown like Trump has the right populist enemies (regardless of his real status as a cunt). The cult of 'everything is fucked' is lubricant for demagogues. :wink: — Tom Storm

:up:

They’ll forever rail against unions and governments while keeping quiet about corporate power, for one reason: they prefer tyranny. — Xtrix

:up:

This is a sticking point for me, too. They pretend to themselves to hate tyranny but have no problem with a tiny proportion of the population owning just about everything and all that entails.

clowns — Tom Storm

Perhaps the choices are clowns or a-holes! In other words, the people's decision in the elections was sagacious and not foolish! C'est la vie!

Zeleneskyy (the comedian)?

The conceit is in the idea that so long as you can form a ruling class of your proles all will be right and well. Of course, this idea has ruined every society it has touched. So much for thriving together. — NOS4A2

Actually I'm strongly influenced by various conservative thinkers, and I don't expect Utopia to ever quite arrive, but we can and should try to do better. Tax the rich more. Invest in health care, education, infrastructure, dealing with the climate crisis. This is like a homeowner fixing things around the house, and some of us prefer to think of citizens owning the 'home' as opposed to a tiny segment of the population.

Since wealth makes it easier to gather and pass on the wealth (and because it's all of us who generate it together, despite uneven reward), there's a tendency for dangerous, anti-democratic accumulation that should be corrected for with tax laws. The point is to build a stable system, in which as many as possible are given a genuine chance at a happy life. This involves no illusions that life can ever be without struggle or competition.)