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The moment enough of us decide this has to change, it will.
Relink productivity and wages! 90% tax rate on all the cash you earn in a year after the first $10M Close corporate tax loopholes
We can solve this, we just need to decide.
Maybe a general strike is out and we should just start a quiet friday strike, and just start extending that back through the week. Productivity just keeps falling until the wealthy decide they don't want to suffer with the rest of us and take the fucking haircut.
After the first $1MM. Ten million dollars in a single year would set me, and likely just about anyone else, up comfortably for life twice over.
Don't tie it to a number.
Imagine if they did this back in the 60s, but using numbers.
"1 million??? Thats way too high! If I made 1 million in a year my grandkids could retire from that year. Better make it $100,000. 90% tax after $100,000."
Today because of inflation I would say someone making $100,000 a year is comfortable in luxery, but still earning their pay.
Tie it to a percentage of the curve of what average americans make, and I think you deflate most of inflation. Because if their price for a good is $3.00, and it costs $1.25 worth of wages to make, they could raise that $3 to $5, and only give the workers $0.25 raise, which means now that item costs $1.50 to make, but sells for $5 instead of $3. This rewards ceo's to raise prices disproportionally. Tie it to the curve, and if he raises the price to $5, now he has to pay workers $3.25. Suddenly it's not the ceos getting rewarded for doing that. Suddenly random price hikes to please shareholders are GONE. Which means if you can't stay profitable in a fair market, you cease to exist. You can't just pull a short term band-aid fix to pop a stock price, and ignore consequences. Because now those consequences actually kill your company.
What we would be left with are CEOs who actually RUN their company, rather than just load the numbers. We'd have better products, better wages, and a better life.
But if we tie it to a number, our grandkids will be right back to where we are.
I like the cut of your jib.
You haven't lost your mind at all. It is squarely atop your shoulders.
Take your current yearly salary, multiply it by however many years you expect to live after retirement + let's say... 10% on top for inflation, + another 10 for medical expenses. Is that number above, or below, $10M? Retirement is fucking expensive and only going up in cost.
I've modeled it a bit more precisely considering actual expenditures as well as social security income, projected inflation and investment returns, etc. $5MM in my pocket right now should set me up just fine.
Typically revolutions only occur when a significant number of elites defect from the current regime.
Large numbers of dissatisfied people need a Schelling Point to rally around and coordinate effectively.
Best bet for revolution right now seems to be for more elite colleges to start withholding degrees over this Israeli thing.
50% would be fine but it should apply to all income including investments, gifts, etc. maybe let inheritance be amoritized over 10 years or something.
100% death tax on all assets over $1m excluding a single house. That my final offer.
There's no justification for a birth lottery that awards democracy-warping levels of wealth to whoever had the evilest parents.
If you're struggling financially, you're not "middle class".
If you read the article, it's defined purely in terms of income:
The poll, commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition, found that around 65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle.
In a way, it kind of proves the point that we need to reevaluate what the actual cost of living is in the modern age. For a family of 4 to be considered middle class by this metric, they would have an income of $62,400/year or higher. For a single individual, it's just $30,120/year. I don't know anywhere in the US where making $15 an hour means you're in the middle class, yet the federal government wants to keep acting like it's the 1980s and you can live it up to an extent on such a meager income.
That being said, financial struggle doesn't necessarily mean they're one step away from being destitute. It could just be a struggle to maintain their current standard of life, where is used to be taken as a given that this would improve over time.
Think of it this way.
For decades, 'middle class' was defined as one income that could pay for a family of four. Up until the Nixon inflation of the 1970s anyone with a halfway decent job was 'middle class.' Back then $1 million was a giant fortune
Then Reagan came in with his tax cuts for the rich. By 1992, middle class was defined as two incomes and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
need to reevaluate
there will never be an administration that would sign off on adjusting the measurements such that millions of people would suddenly be categorized in a lower class than they are. that would make the people calling the shots look bad
Then you reclassify it day one and make a point of doing it retroactively, showing how the previous (Republican) administrations are to blame
This is why the presidential administration should not be the source of these definitions.
At this point, they'd like to convince you that you're middle class when you share a place with two roommates.
The medias are trying to redefine having a second or third job as poly employment to make it sound like it's a choice.
The rich fucks try to define a new normal so they can keep on making more money and fuck us over in the process.
Not necessarily. You can live outside your means at any income level.
Also, children are fucking expensive.
I certainly don't expect things to turn around in my lifetime. The future I want would require radical, systemic changes, but most Americans don't want anything to radically change. That doesn't mean a majority of Americans are happy with things the way they are, not at all, but they don't want to radically change anything, despite their unhappiness. The majority of Americans want things to get better without anything fundamentally changing. I believe that's one of the definitions of insanity.
Not wanting to fight a civil war =/= not wanting radical change
I guarantee we’d have a very different nation if individual issues and policies were put to a vote, as they are in some European nations.
Given how your party system works in America I’m wondering what you think a realistic non violent alternative would be?
If we're not expecting anything to ever get better, there's a solution to that too; rather the opposite of "business as usual."
That's not middle class...
I don't know if it has its own name, but it's like the Overton window in politics.
Average people assume that they're average and middle class means average, so they're "middle class" despite having three figures in saving, no home equity, and a retirement account that will never be enough to retire.
Prior generations at least built up home equity over a lifetime.
As one of these middle class fucks I don't know how to refer to myself. I'm supporting myself and a dependent adult on barely six figures a year (plus some disability money).
I know I have it way fucking better than folks working in a warehouse or migrant agricultural workers so I don't want to falsely describe myself as lower class when I've clearly got it better... but I'm also being fucking squeezed and each month I eat into my savings. I will say that I am not carrying debt because I aggressively saved early in my career but I am slowly whittling down what should be my retirement savings.
So, what the fuck am I?
So, what the fuck am I?
Scrapping by
People focus on income, income ain't the whole picture, it's wealth that's important.
It used to be owning a home built wealth passively, as you lived and paid your mortgage, you gained equity.
If people cant afford to buy a home, it's almost impossible to build wealth. You just flush more money away on rent as you earn more money.
It's what happens when they charge as much as people can pay for something we all need.
Fucked.
The "middle class" is currently defined by arbitrary income levels, not purchasing power. Considering the cost of living disparity across the US it's an absolutely useless measure.
To be in the middle class 50 years ago, you were able to buy a reasonable family house on one income. To do that today if you're in an area where the cost of living isn't absolutely bottom of the barrel you've got to make what is currently considered "upper middle class" income or slightly above.
Middle class living is relegated to upper middle class incomes while middle and lower middle class have to rent that lifestyle.
upper middle class incomes
The middle class died the day they had to make the "upper middle class" a thing...
That's the wealth distribution middle class was supposed to be. But it shrank down so much they had to make new class distinctions up.
In pre-revolution France, the bourgeois were the middle class.
99% in poverty.
O.99% bourgeois
0.01%, the aristocrats!
That distribution wasn't sustainable back then, it's not sustainable now.
As wealth concentrates at the top, there's less for everyone else, and we're all poor.
"65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle. "
That sounds more like a problem with the definition of the federal poverty level than it is a problem with the middle class.
If you're struggling, you aren't middle class.
Federal Poverty Level for 2024 is dependent on household size:
https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/federal-poverty-guidelines/
Oh, man, now I have to see if Lemmy can do tables... Hmmm nope!
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $15,060 - $30,120
2 - $20,440 - $40,880
3 - $25,820 - $51,640
4 - $31,200 - $62,400
5 - $36,580 - $73,160
6 - $41,960 - $83,920
7 - $47,340 - $94,680
8 - $52,720 - $105,440
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760
So let's take the prototypical nuclear family, 2 parents, 2 kids.
$62,400 is 200% poverty. I could see that being a struggle. I think maybe what we need is to re-define the poverty level.
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $31,200 - $62,400
2 - $36,580 - $73,160
3 - $41,960 - $83,920
4 - $47,340 - $94,680
5 - $52,720 - $105,440
6 - $58,100 - $116,200
7 - $63,480 - $126,960
8 - $68,860 - $137,720
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760
Yeah, and consider how bad it is for the class below the middle class. We're literally fucking drowning in debt.
I had to dig a bit, but I found out the source poll's threshold for "middle class": 200% or more past the poverty line.
The poverty line is about $15k for individuals. People making $30k a year are, clearly, not middle class. The current standard puts the beginning of middle class in the low $50k's.
This is doomer clickbait bullshit.
Oh sweeties, you were never middle class. You were always working class and they gave you a special name so you could feel better than Dave the Binman.
A feature, not a bug of an oligarchy and an economy run by effective monopolies.