What about the working class?

[rhiannon55]

I am a lifelong Democrat and I love Kamala and Tim. I think they did a good job campaigning in such a short amount of time. The only criticism I have about Kamala's speeches is that she talked a lot about helping the middle class, but hardly ever mentioned the working class. Many people, myself included, have never felt like they have made it to the middle class, so I think that might have hurt her chances. Many working people aspire to reach the middle class and never really make it there.

[onecaliberal]

1. They vote against themselves their entire lives:

If they bother at all, which is basically the same thing.

[GPV]

2. I'm middle class in that I have a college degree, but financially it's tight.

[Ex Lurker]

3. They're not exclusive terms

Not everybody in the middle class works in an office. A lot of blue collar people own homes, have their own businesses, etc.

[msongs]

4. do working class people consider that an insult? myabe they think they are higher up the status chain nt

[Keepthesoulalive]

5. Most democrats are in the working class.

Working poor , teachers , nurses, all types of technicians, assembly line workers, postal workers. Garbage collectors , I think you get my point. The republicans have not done 1 thing for the working class. They only care about their rich benefactors. They keep getting re elected and they elect the most unqualified useless uneducated individuals we can imagine. The democrats did a helluva job but they faced a lot of headwinds.

[Mike 03]

6. I'm reading a very important book that pertains to this

"White Poverty" by Reverend William Barber.

His definition of poverty, which makes so much more sense to me than the OPM (The Official Poverty Measure, the way it is currently calculated) really includes a huge percentage of the working class and while Democrats have good intentions and moral clarity we need to aggressively attack poverty in this country. He joins Matthew Desmond (author of "Evicted" and "Poverty, By America" ) in making this argument.

It seems similar to arguments made by Thom Hartmann, Chris Murphy and Jared Yates Sexton. But I'm only about 40 pages in. It's an incredible book.

[Sympthsical]

7. "Evicted" is a fascinating read

Outlines a lot of what is invisible in American consciousness about housing in this country.

[kacekwl]

8. How about the middle

working class. Or the working middle class. Or how about the almost working middle class. How about the middle lower working sometimes class. SMH

[Jilly_in_VA]

9. "working class" is a pretty nebulous term any more

What does it even mean? Some so-called "working class" people (factory workers, union members, etc) actually make more than so-called "middle class" people (teachers, for example). I think we need a whole new classification.

[MichMan]

10. People in the middle class don't work?

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

11. If you say "working class," you're a socialist.

It's just the way politics works in the U.S.

Politicians from all two parties try to confuse voters into thinking that "middle class" actually means "middle income," whatever that is. "Obfuscation" is the fancy word for it. Non-elite people in U.S. society are taught to be "in the middle," not to much this or that. It's ingrained in both the education system and Protestant Christianity (which like it or not permeates our society and culture). Note that this is NOT what gets taught/ingrained at elite prep schools and universities. Whereas people NOT in the elite are supposed to want to be in the "middle," elites are taught to take advantage of the system. As it happens, both parties govern primarily in the interests of the real middle class: what we now call the wealthy and/or oligarchs.

"Middle class" is actually the name for the narrow strata of society between the hereditary landed nobility and ordinary slobs like peasants, merchant seamen, mechanics, small farmers and sharecroppers, etc.; back at the time of the American Revolution. You know, like our saintly and much revered founding fathers. The term comes out of (Adam) Smith-ean economics (Wealth of Nations and its ideological relatives). By that definition, Trump and Musk are "middle class." And yeah, government works primarily for that group of people. When things trickle down to the non-elite, it's mostly for purposes of keeping them (us) pacified. Natives with pitchforks are not healthy for the maintenance of capitalist society, though the GOP seems to have either forgotten that or thinks they can do with circuses (without the bread).

While the system of encouraging the masses to be mediocre (middle) has served capitalism well through it's 200 years or so of history, I sense that as technology allows the elite to replace ever-greater amounts of human labor with machines; more draconian forms of indoctrination may be necessary to pacify the majority of the population. That won't be pretty

[jmbar2]

12. On your next errand-running trip...

Look at all the people who serve you or work where you shop/get services. In my area, not one of them working full time will earn enough to rent a 1 bedroom apartment or save enough to retire. Yet they are working their butts off every day.

The next step up - teachers, office workers, service techs, barely earn enough, and a lot still qualify for food stamps.

instead of "working class" maybe we need a term like "sustainable wage workers". A lot of our current working class would not fall into that category.

[Blappy]

13. Leaving other considerations alone

when I was a kid in the 1960s, 'working class' (at least in my understanding) were those who were scraping by, living paycheck to paycheck, and middle class meant 'economically comfortable'. The middle class has diminished since Reagan, so it seems to me, the ranks of the working class (as defined above) are simultaneously swelling.

Bringing education and station of employment, blue collar or white collar into the argument only confuses the circumstances. It is class warfare, and the "economic royalists" are winning decisively.

[rhiannon55]

14. Thank you, Blappy

"when I was a kid in the 1960s, 'working class' (at least in my understanding) were those who were scraping by, living paycheck to paycheck, and middle class meant 'economically comfortable'."

You put into words exactly how I have always distinguished between the two terms. I grew up poor and have spent my life living paycheck to paycheck, aspiring to be in the middle class. I had kids too young, and had to learn to support them when I didn't even know how to support myself. I had a lot of different low paying jobs over the years, eventually getting a college degree in my thirties. But I mostly worked in social services and the pay was never very high. Now I'm semi-retired at 73 because I can't afford to be totally retired. I have never been economically comfortable enough to think of myself as being part of the middle class.