Perhaps we are at least developing a more distinct class system. The middle class has been shrinking and the affluent class is becoming more affluent---and, I suggest, more class conscious. Imagine you live in a house worth a million dollars plus. Chances are, you do not drive your BMW or Mercedes anywhere but in upper class areas and avoid all poor areas. The only poor people you come in personal contact with are people trained to serve you. But you are still exposed to the trials and tribulations of the poor because you see them on your TV. You see their worst side on TV news clips---ones about gangs, child neglect, pedophiles, and drug-related crimes done by simple, non affluent people. Perhaps you look at the TV and see an image of a long food line at some unemployment office or charity. In the line may be several obese minority women waddling along with their out-of-wedlock children. Instead of compassion, could it possibly be that you feel disdain? After all, why do these people overeat and have so many children? “Why should we support them: they are crowding us out of our own society!” This is a sense of class superiority and it is growing among the affluent in our society---one that is not justified. This being our society, we are responsible for all its faults. We failed to educate these people properly, we created an age of “sexual freedom” so that their families came apart. We failed to deal effectively with birth control. We fight against aborting unwanted children. We dominate with an over tolerant, over-humanistic, or obsolete old moral system. We emphasized “freedom” and “tolerance” so much that immoral behavior became tolerated. We made “the pursuit of happiness” the common goal and set up a culture of materialism by making buying “stuff” the way to achieve it. The poor, however, are at a disadvantage. In their misery, many of them take to drugs and commit crimes. We stubbornly impose our religious and/or secular system on the way people believe and think even though, it is clearly not working. We shaped them this way and then use them as the scapegoat. If you familiarize yourself with world history, and you find that the class system worsens when a society declines and it declines when what people's whole belief system grows old, and thus when it ceases to any longer work well. Charles http://atheistic-science.com
America has and always has had a meaningful class system. It is, after all, only natural to want to spend time with others who come from like backgrounds, who understand the same allusions, the same tastes, who share the same vocabulary and lifestyles. Money is often associated with class, but it is neither the most important element, nor even strictly a necessary one - nor, to be sure, does money alone ever elevate the class of one's birth. One can find people of virtually any class living in a house 'worth' a million dollars or more. The low-brow prole who got lucky and the refined upper-class person are not likely to even be neighbours, despite living in houses with the same appraisal value, but they may have certain interests that converge regarding, say, inheritance or capital gains taxation. But the refined upper may also have political interests converging with certain elements of the lower middle-class, like private gun ownership. The higher classes should feel superior, because they are, over all. They are superior in a very direct way, since they have higher social rank (per the definition of superior). They are also superior in many constituent ways: they are better educated, more intelligent, better-looking, healthier, have more couth, and possess a greater understanding and appreciation of the higher kinds of civilisation, like art and music, than the classes below them. I wish it were not necessary to mention that there are exceptions, but I will do so for the simple-minded legalists reading this. Class systems are vehicles for the best genes to float to the top of the human hierarchy. But it is important to point out that not all class systems are equally competent. The American version puts more emphasis on money than the one of, say, Victorian Britain, which is a detriment. One does not see many Bertrand Russells or Winston Churchills emerging from America's current upper class.
No, they're more likely to emerge from the middle class, even the lower middle class, and occasionally near the very bottom of the economy. It gives bright people from poor backgrounds the hope that they might one day be heard, which means we've got a lot more of our brightest people striving for success in the arts, philosophy and politics, just as in business and academia. It's the American Dream. You have a problem with that?
We did have a strong middle class, but 30 years of Republican rule (and the occasional centrist Democrat), have destroyed it. We export our manufacturing jobs, cut taxes for the super rich, overlook tax loopholes, frame inheritence taxes as a "death tax", sign free trade agreements, undercut labor unions, fail to pass universal health care, overspend on military hardware... all of which serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Ahh, so what do we now call that class of people that falls in between rich and poor? Have they invented a new name? Can we just get rid of the "middle" of something? Baron Max
There is still one, but the gap is widening. Soon there will only be rich and poor, with no one in between. That's the Republican dream.
Well, that's good! It shows that the hard workers will become rich and the lazy bastards who just like to breed a lot will be poor. that's as it should be. Oops, except for the new president-elect Osama who wants to steal from the hard-workers and give to those lazy bastards. Yeah, I forgot ...so now it's easy to see why no one wants to be in the middle class anymore ...they'll get nothing from Osama. Better now to just lie on your ass and breed a lot of little kids. Baron Max
That's the problem, hard workers can't get rich, they just end up working in sweat shop conditions in a race to the bottom, while the lazy rich avoid taxes and get no-bid contracts, tax shelters, and political favoritism. Fortunately, that will end with Obama, but it could be too late already.
Then why are we constantly hearing all those success stories of people making it big in America? Those stories are all over the news and in the papers all the time. Is that all just faked? ...just lies? Yeah, you're already preparing your excuses for Osama's fuck ups! If things don't work out to be utopian para-fuckin'-dise, you'll just say "Well, it was too late for Osama to save us!". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Baron Max
I don't think Obama will fuck it up, it's just that Bush got there first. The proof is all over the news, the economy is as bad as it's been since the Great Depression. Anyway, there are individual success stories, and that's great, but you have to look at the big picture. Normal hardworking people with families, a house, and kids, can barely get by. It used to be only the husband had to work, and you could still afford a middle-class life. Now you have to do something extraordinary just to break even. All as a result of Republican policies that proclaim freedom while our economic freedom goes down the drain.
So you believe the Great News Media propaganda, do you? Go out around town, Spider, look around. The media is trying to scare us all for some reason ....and it seems to be working. Perhaps they're working for Osama now, and trying to get him into the Savior role so they can make more money promoting HIS greatness and wonders. Baron Max
I don't have to go out, two of my friends found this out the hard way. One (32) couldn't find a job in anything but fast food and joined the Army. The other one had a heart attack, declared bankruptcy, and is working at Wall-Mart (he's 45). 500,000 jobs were lost just last month! Don't get your news from Brush Lintball, he got to be a rich bastard by being a professional liar.
Pompous. Its not like that. When the average job is 8.50 an hour (or less) in your state, you're not going to be moving out of your parents house till you are 40 years old..... Still though, internet innovations provide excellent business opportunity to the well tuned nerd/businessman.
Every society has provided ways for a few individuals in the lower classes to rise a bit. That's part of the justification system of the rich (see there ? anyone can be rich if they are capable. And we're rich, so we must be capable). It also provides the rich with the services of as many of the capable as they need, and no more than they wish to pay for - it takes education, a reasonable diet, and reasonably comfortable circumstances, to manage the complex workings of the rich person's support system - not to forget music and entertainments, high class opportunities for promiscuity, etc. It's all in what kind of society you want. If you allow the arbitrary accumulation and subsequent inheritance of disproportionate wealth, while assigning the costs of the general infrastructure and societal maintenance to the non-wealthy, you will have what such arrangements have always produced.
