Rebuilding the Middle Class?
Rebuilding the Middle Class?
Will Trump and Harris rebuild the middle class?
Is there a middle class?
Economic Class: You either own it or you work for those who do. Economic classes are determined by how groups of people relate to the tools and technologies of society.
The Capitalist Class. In the US, the capitalists own the technology, the platforms, and the corporations. They hire people to work for them, including politicians.
The Working Class. Everyone who needs to work to make a living, including essential workers and government workers. People who have been dispossessed of the opportunity to work are also part of the working-class.
There are still many small businesspeople in America who are part of their community, but they are mostly under terrible stress; if they’re lucky, their business grows big enough to get snapped up by Google or some other giant, and they become its manager, an employee. But mostly, they are being squeezed out by high rents, high material costs, and a shrinking customer base due to growing poverty among their worker-customers. They, too, become workers if they can find a job that pays the bills.
Is there a “Middle Class”? The capitalist class used the media and politicians they own to create the myth of a “middle class”. Originally the term referred to farmers and small businesspeople. But now it refers to a split in the working class with one part doing better than the other. One sector of the working class, the “middle class”, was created by economic bribes in order to buy their political support when capitalism was still expanding. The bribes were unions, health, and other benefits, and salaries large enough to buy a house and send the kids to college. The other part of the working class received no benefits, worked for minimum or less than minimum wages or had no job, had poor medical care, and constantly faced houselessness.
What the Capitalists gave they are taking away. In the 1980’s, the capitalist class began to withdraw the economic bribes and started terminating jobs with benefits. Most unionized workers, including government workers, teachers, and corporate salary workers were in the “middle class”. Today, capitalism is no longer expanding. Now, without economic bribes they cannot keep up, even working two jobs.
No matter what the Politicians say, it is not going to get better. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties, twin parties of capitalism, are campaigning on “rebuilding the middle class”. But this is impossible. The capitalist class would have preferred to maintain a “middle class”, but profits are the main objective. Economic bribes cost money, so the bribe was deliberately withdrawn.
The “Middle Class” and the Digital Economy. The digital economy increasingly leads to laborless production with automation. Capitalism no longer needs to bribe workers, indeed, it will not pay for those it cannot exploit.
“The advent of AI (artificial intelligence) represents a new kind of robotics that is automation without human involvement on an even higher level. The blood-sucking private property system is replacing us with new technologies.
“While the productivity of digital technology makes shared well-being possible for all humanity, the private property system is driving workers into destitution and often homelessness and speeds up the extraction that is destroying the earth. The rapidly accelerating extinction event we experience today has created a race between revolution and annihilation.” League Program. https://lrna.org/program/
United We Stand, Divided We Fall. The “middle class” was always part of the working class. The differences are being erased by the loss of the economic bribes, destruction of small businesses, and the rise of gig jobs, temp work, constantly changing schedules, and non-union jobs. AI is replacing the fast-food fry cook, teachers, reporters as well as the doctor reading your mammograms and planning your health care. Now, there are only the superrich capitalists and the rest of us.
If we want to Survive, we need to End Capitalism.
“Our Country and the World Stand at a Crossroads. Humanity has the potential for economic security and abundance. A community of the people, by the people, and for the people, where children can grow in peace, is possible as never before. Or–if we do nothing—we face increasingly unlivable conditions caused by private ownership of the wealth that human labor has created.“ League Program. https://lrna.org/program/
Revolution is the solution! Check out the full program!
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This is a series of articles intended to encourage a dialogue with developing Revolutionaries. We highlight issues of the day and areas of special interest to new Revolutionaries to provide an Action Guide.
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9/3/24
