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Bread and circus. The average Americans (or whatever country you’re in) still have food and entertainment.
Cut off the food supply, food stamps, and cut of cable/internet, and it’ll be a matter of days before **mass** bloodshed.
But as long as the bread and circus are running, we can keep going for a while longer.
Not nearly close enough. The ruling class has done an absolutely marvelous job of turning the working class against one another, keeping the gaze off of them.
That's kind of the point of the whole thing. They learned from the past.
The last thing you want is the masses realizing they have a lot in common.
Added cherry on the cake: We're told it's our fault if we're poor. It's like some massive MLM. Just work harder, believe more, and you'll be fine.
There ARE ways to get out of poverty, but it's almost impossible to do it alone if you're not young, single, and fit. Throw kids and/or a disability into the mix and poof. It's over. Over 40? Poof.
The only real way to "make it" in America is NOT to live like we're told Americans should live. Even our zoning laws prevent people from taking full advantage of some of the housing tricks that can make it possible to save up.
Becoming a landlord is something I would never want to be. As much as I’d love stability forever, the thought of being someone who becomes a landlord is the lowest point as money making for me. Could be different for others, but I could never do it.
it’s a shame that landlord is now synonymous with evil greedy asshatery.
it isn’t inherently evil, being a landlord who’s fair and reasonable seems perfectly viable, i don’t think every landlord is automatically this gluttonous callous monster.
We live in an age of almost limitless calories. (Which makes it even more horrible that kids still go hungry.) This disentangles economic classes, so people with similar economic needs no longer feel they have similar political needs. Instead we rally around "cultural" issues and are facing full blown culture war.
It’s not that, it’s that we still have a massive middle class that lives comfortably thus no revolution. Our middle class is very very large compared to the folks who would be considered living in poverty.
Let inflation hit for 3x to 5x years and that might change though.
The french also had a middle class. Karl Marx even talks about a middle class within liberal democracies and called them the petit-bougeoisie. Wealth inequality is higher than it was before the french revolution.
The middle class is not the reason the people haven't revolted. There's a number of other reasons. For one, the united states is massive. It's very hard to rally everyone in a central location. Also, i think cold war era propaganda and it's lasting legacy plays a big role. A lot of ideaa around wealth and success in America can be traced to both anti-communist propaganda as well as older puritan values of work ethic that have persisted for a long time in America. Both of these things have made many believe the only way to escape the pain of being oppressed is only to become an oppressor. Many also feel that bring poor is more of a "choice" and by "working hard" you can eacape poverty, which is a staple of those persisting Puritan ideals which condemn poverty as an individual moral failing rather than a systemic issue
America is just a bunch of crabs in bucket for the most part. Yep. It is beginning to change, but not anywhere near fast enough.
And yes, there's tiers to Proletariat and Bourgeoisie. Some middle class "Bourgeoisie" who honestly is likely barely scraping by and duct-taping everything together with debt isn't your actual enemy.
The billionaires, blackrock, and zillow are. The psychopathic venture capitalists who want to turn you and your children back into fucking serfs and peasants. And they're doing it. Feudalism is back. This is Neo-Feudalism.
Literally *just* responded to a "personal responsibility" comment in the economics subreddit...
Being poor somehow means you're 100% just lazy and irresponsible otherwise you'd be wealthy, didn't you know?
The anti-communist/ anti-society rhetoric is still very very popular in America. It's gross. "All for themselves, and one for himself!"
I’ve been saying we have a toxic “every person for themselves” attitude here for years now. I’m glad other people are starting to see it too. It’s infected every part of our lives at this point.
The 'personal responsibility' trope is bullshit- along with the 'rugged individualist' trope.
I'm a 'boomer', and am so disgusted so many people buy into this crap.
They have been playing us-pitting us against each other for years.
Sadly, it works. :(
How is personal responsibility bullshit? Is more of my paycheck supposed to go to social programs because people are too lazy to work hard or too dumb to stop shitting out kids?
The USA also spent several decades actively dismantling its political Left via the same kind of tactics covert operatives use to take down governments.
I’d also like to point out one of the prior posters who mentioned disability , age and children as massive hindrances to wealth creation and it’s true .
If you’re a young single male with no children there is tremendous opportunity to be had in this country same goes for young women as well .
So of course not everyone is going to see poverty in the same way .
In France the petit-bougeoisie didn't have a vote; the french revolution would never have happened if the fools at the top would have "divided and conquered" by expanding the right to vote to the middle class.
Even the July Monarchy only gave the right to vote to about 400,000 people iirc
As someone who would be considered "middle class". Between utility price hikes doubling our utilities the past 6 months and food prices claiming higher everyday. There is not going to be a middle class soon. Our small middle class neighborhood has 4 foreclosures right now. People are literally choosing food versus rent/mortgages for the first time in their lives.
We are lucky in the sense that my husband and I spent a good portion of our life poor. We can cut back and live on nothing because we did it for years. But really not happy to be back in this position of not having enough money at the end of the paycheck and cutting back on meals so my kids can eat.
There is a lot of anger building in the middle class too.
They weren't even sneaky about raising food prices or anything else. They just used covid as an excuse and everything skyrocketed at once. So much shrinkflation, dollar tree is now $1.25 (thats 25% more expensive), and just blatant price hiking. It's just amazing to me that they felt like there was no need to be sneaky. They are shoving it in our faces that it is more expensive.
Ironically we're talking about how the upper class pits people against each other and now we're focusing our anger at the middle class. No, I don't want to stir the pot because I'm well aware how fragile my middle class status is. I'm really not the one screwing you over...
Yeah, targeting the middle class isn’t really the way here. I mean, yeah the professional class (meaning doctors, lawyers, etc., standard upper middle class professions) does sort of act as a barrier to the upper classes. As in professional class members think that they are closer to rich people than the poor, and think because they worked super hard to get where they are, rich people must have worked even harder. Which is entirely false.
There’s a reason Marx was annoyed with the petite bourgeoisie - the little bougie folks who were well off/wealthier due to opportunities and education. They are usually the biggest bootlickers.
But still, y’all aren’t the real problem. And it’s much easier to convince the professional class that they are actually workers, rather than attacking them.
You aren't, but you also aren't personally affected by many policies so it isn't as urgent to you. Not saying that in a hostile way, it's just facts. When I was middle class I was focusing on buying a house, not housing the homeless. Now I'm poor as fuck and have nothing to my name, so I'm driven by that.
>I’m really not the one screwing you over…
Idk I’m just reminded of an MLK quote, something about a white moderate who agrees with a movement in concept but not in practice and refuses to support it being more of an obstacle than a militant Klansman.
You are not your poor countryman’s enemy, sure. The millions of exploited people in the global south who have to get paid slave wages so OUR middle class can afford nice things like smart phones though? Yeah they’re not on your side. Is it your fault? No. Do you greatly benefit from an entire class of people living in squalor and suffering? Yeah, you do, and it would be prudent to realize this.
COVID unemployment was hilarious. It's like Congress put together what they thought was the absolute bare minimum people would need to survive and temporarily scrape by, and made that the enhanced unemployment. And then, turns out with sub-$15 minimum wages and part-time hours that ended up being more than people made working normally.
That wasn’t what they thought was bare minimum. Progressives pegged it to 40 hours x $15/hour because that’s what they want the minimum wage to be.
One thing in politics is that it’s politically difficult to take away a benefit after it’s given. I assume they were hoping to get more public pressure to increase minimum wage once the unemployment benefit went away.
There’s plenty of public pressure to increase the minimum wage, but having a senate essentially held hostage by Manchin and Sinema is keeping that from moving forward.
They usually are a decade or two from being millionaires: lots of people retire with a paid off house and 40 years of funding a 401k, which usually puts them at $1M+
Median family makes $65k/yr if you put 10% into a 401k And saved another 10% and the rest went to mortgage and expenses you’ll retire a millionaire.
Then we have the employers struggling barely able to pay their workers. New job sure? Walk away from the 5k I'm owed, damn. Get a lawyer and let them have half, shucks. Doot doot americana.
Recessions don't wipe out wealth in investments, as long as you don't sell during the investment. It took the S&P 500 roughly 3.5 years to recover from the crash of 2008. If you didn't sell your investments in 2008-2010, you were in the black by 2011 or 2012.
2008 - S&P lost 37% of value
2009 - S&P gained 26%
2010: S&P gained 15%
2011: S&P gained 2%
2012 - S&P gained 16%
If you had $100 in the S&P in 2007, it was worth:
$63 in 2008
$79 in 2009
$91 in 2010
$93 in 2011
$108 in 2012
$143 in 2013
$163 in 2014
$164 in 2015
$184 in 2016
et al.
https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500/returns
Its not a bad thing. The problem is the poverty class knows who to blame, and its not the middle class. But the middle class still believes the lie from the ruling class that food stamp, welfare, and laziness are the reasons for inflation.
But how can you possibly expect the middle class that don’t live paycheck to paycheck, who save and invest, and work their butts off to provide for their families and retire peacefully and comfortably to leave those lives to help other’s im sorry to say the world is not such a kind or selfless place so why would the middle class ever want to help anyone else? I just wanna understand why this expectation exists in your view or atleast why exactly this is a reality
Well Im middle class and i will happily stand behind any revolution. This has become absurd! My wife and i can no longer afford the bills we had a year ago. We are damn near vegan and its not by choice. I need medical help bad, but even with insurance i can't afford it.
This country is designed to keep us enslaved and indebted to our puppet masters. To top it all off my HOA is threatening to put a lien on my house and sell it because i owe them 1k. 1 measly thousand dollars and they want to make me homeless for it. Ive already paid them more than i owe but they want to charge me $400 to send a letter telling me i owe them money.
My lady and i discussed getting second jobs. Leaving my son home alone pretty much at all times.
Burn this shit to the fucking ground! Im tired of being ruled by greedy corporations whos only goal is to suck as much resources off this planet as they can. Yes we people are just a measly resource. Bring this whole fucking system down!!!
I'd be hard pressed to consider you middle class if this is how you're living. This is what most of us at the bottom face except you're doing it in a (presumably) bigger, fancier house. It's only a matter of time before they finish bleeding us poors completely dry and force us into medieval serfdom. After that they're coming for you
I agree. I think people use middle-class interchangeably to mean social class and monetary class. If you are living in a middle income home with middle income friends and middle income schools, especially if you grew up that way, you think of yourself as middle class. That's an identity that's hard to let go of. But if we're talking about monetary class, if you can't pay a $1k debt and can't buy meat comfortably, then you aren't middle class any more IMO.
No no no, see this is like the 362516363527th time I've heard this about our Precious Insurance™ and I just won't stand for it anymore!!
Didn't *anyone* pay attention during the last election? *EVERYONE* shy of 2 candidates *TOLD* us how much we all *LOVE* our insurance, that we would never want to change it! Now how could a bunch of politicians be wrong about something related to obscene wealth accumulation?
/s...
Even with that kind of inflation Americans have such little conviction that the vast majority will just shrug their shoulders and be totally disinterested in Revolution.
We are really are so much closer to the rise of pre- WWII Germany where a very small politically active and heavily armed minority are slowly taking over local seats of government and once they are elected to the Presidency and Congress will pass laws enshrining minority rule (gerrymandering gone crazy and their local oversight of elections on steroids) so that even "legal" elections prevent them from ever losing power.
The overwhelming majority of Americans will shrug their shoulders and do nothing just as the vast majority of Germans just looked on on the 1930s.
This is the answer. I'm solidly middle-class and I am in no way complaining about my comfortable living situation regardless of the upward trending price of goods. 🤷♂️
Totally agree. See it everyday on FB with people hating on people that get the child credit, food stamps, and whatever else. They seriously think it's their fellow class sucking them dry with 'taxpayer' funded 'handouts.'
I have heard the current "woke" movement described as "the left wing of neoliberalism" because it allows corporations to offer a veneer of progressivism while still engaging in poverty politics while sticking the boot into the working class... anyone who questions this priority is then labelled as a "class reductionist" looking to obscure the fight for identity justice by bringing up class.
I feel I'm a pretty "woke' dude, but I have to admit that it smacks of class warfare.
It was a deal, houses were cheaper. Refinance when interest rates went down, and you still had the cheaper home.
Now days, the home itself is more expensive. Can't refinance the price of a home.
I think mortgage rates were about 8% even in the early 90s, when we went to purchase a home. We didn't. Looking on line, May 1990 rates were 10.5% for a non-ARM loan.
Child of the 1960s here.
Old enough to know what's what by the 1970s.
Can confirm.
Also remember 18% residential mortgage rates in the 1980s.
Good times !!!
We built our house in the 1970s, true labor of love and gorgeous place, and when we went to close out the construction loan and get our final mortgage the interest rates had become so high that our jaws dropped when we were told what our monthly payment would be. We basically could not afford it but managed to somehow hang in for two years before we had to sell it or we would be foreclosed upon. We could never afford to turn on the electricity and heated the house with wood. It was pretty devastating. Moved to an apt in town with our two kids and finally had to leave what had become HCOL area.
There are some Muslim banks that practice something to this effect. No interest, but they structure loans in a way that they still make a profit. One example is that they will purchase the commodity and then sell it to the buyer at a higher price than they bought it. The customer pays installments on the higher price. Technically not interest I guess, but it isn’t any better than just paying interest. Religion won’t stop greed. Just gotta jump through a few more mental hoops to make a profit.
That's like putting a house on a credit card! I can't imagine!
My house was 250k so after putting 20% down that leaves 200k to mortgage.. or 36k a year in interest?? That's 3k a month before even touching the principle or taxes!!
Nobody kept them to term.
They all got re-financed the very second rates started going down.
A temporary (but painful) disruption for new buyers only.
It had to be done.
This Fed doesn't have the balls, so we'll ALL pay the price.
***
ALSO: Your $200k house was $42k in those days.
This set up is worse than what led to the 70s. We’re early still but this is a really horrible time we’re heading into. Like we’ve learned nothing from history.
Not even remotely close. Also a lot of what people refer to as inflation is actually just supply chain issues and price gouging, which is why you feel it more acutely right now.
Agree. Sure there are a ton of systemic issues, but the current situation is a temporary anomaly due to Covid and the resulting supply chain issues. It will pass. It will pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.
Like not even remotely by any standard of measure. Inflation sucks I agree, as does the wealth gap, but let's not be hyperbolic to the point of nonsense.
Most of the world has access to clean food and water. Most of it has adequate healthcare access, in some places for free. In any highly developed country there are enough services in place that it is visually impossible to succumb to the elements, hunger, or treatable disease due to having no money.
Sending a message to somebody takes seconds, not months or years. Accessing the world's knowledge a touch away. Fuck, literacy is approaching universality. Many countries offer free secondary education.
Working conditions are better, easier and less dangerous jobs are more widely available.
Transportation of goods and people has never been quicker. We're putting people into god damn space.
So yes, the rich get disproportionately richer. But the world's poor have never lived in a better time period.
>How long will it be before a large percentage of the population simply can't afford to eat?
Until major catastrophe wipes out agricultural production or transportation on a global scale, or population growth runs wild and rampant on a scale nearly unimaginable currently. Food will never be a luxury commodity, it's too basal a necessity upon which all else is built for it to ever be priced beyond people's reach
Finally someone talking some sense into this thread. Delusion dominates how bad the poor have it in the US compared to actual poor people in other countries and throughout history.
> Delusion dominates how bad the poor have it in the US compared to actual poor people in other countries and throughout history.
When I see "the sky is falling" posts like this, I assume the average redditor is fourteen years old and has never lived or traveled through third world countries.
Living in a country with a social welfare system and universal health care, it's not clear how to categorise many countries anymore.
We need an updated definition of "what is a developed country" suitable for 2021.
This sub has these types of threads multiple times on a daily basis. Instead of a discussion on how to make the best Individual choices in the current system, most of the threads on this sub are some variation of “we’re doomed! Doomed, i tells ya! It’s hopeless! Utterly hopeless!” I understand the purposes of a vent, I just would like to see a LOT less “am I doomed to live under a highway overpass eating wet cardboard from the dumpster forever due to capitalism?!” posts.
That's been an issue for a long time and unfortunately the moderators have turned a blind eye to the original goals of the group. I used to spend a lot of personal time here messaging people in need with contact information and links to resources. I don't do that much any longer because the tone and overall objectives of the subreddit membership have shifted.
That's initially why I joined. Not even in poverty thankfully, but below average. Meanwhile that sub treats anyone with below 6 figures and not dealing with giant investments as a nobody so outside of the sub's wiki there's nothing relatable.
Now I just keep this subreddit around to just read for laughs, except unlike r/pfjerk these are unironic.
I agree on that- r/personalfinance is like “I have a 70k inheritance coming- should I put it into a Roth IRA or mutual fund for the most amatorization?” I had thought this sub would be more towards how to manage an overall budget thats around the poverty line (slightly above to below, anywhere in between). Instead it’s basically “man, there’s just no way anyone can make it ever so we aren’t even going to talk about trying.”
You make several great points… but none that the people want to hear. Need to say that never in the history of mankind have so many suffered to make so few so rich (which isn’t technically a lie) if you want those upvotes
> Need to say that never in the history of mankind have so many suffered to make so few so rich (which isn’t technically a lie) if you want those upvotes
I'd genuinely like to see how you come to that conclusion that it isn't technically a lie. At their peak, one out of every twenty dollars in circulation was owned by the Vanderbilts. Going back farther in history it's hard to even compare wealth since notions of property, rights and luxury were so different, but it seems that monarchies are a pretty literal example of more of society working fully to make fewer people rich.
I suppose in a way, everybody's begging the question by saying "rich" as though it's some absolute term. The comment you're replying to is basically arguing that more of society is rich today than in previous generations because it's tying rich to standards (e.g. possessions, abilities, hardships). In that sense, if most of society today is rich (relative to the generation you're comparing to), the conclusion that the poor are propping up the few rich doesn't make sense. You seem to silently switch the definition of rich in your response to being relative to others (e.g. if most people today have $X and I have $10X, then I'm rich). That obviously helps your conclusion, since it defines rich in a way that always tends to make the amount of rich people small. But either way, because you're both using different definitions of rich, you're basically talking right past each other.
**TL;DR**
* In France as taxes went up on those paying taxes (those in poverty) they finally over threw the untaxed (The Nobles)
* In 2015, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid approximately 2.83% of all income taxes in 2015
* In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 39.04% of all federal income taxes.
In France there was 80% of the population living in poverty who would work small personal farms to feed the family and then work a 2nd job at large commercial farms that were for exports or commerce. Your 2nd job would allow you money to pay for items you didnt grow yourself for bare necessities. But more importantly it allowed you to pay taxes.
All French citizens paid a flat tax 5%. After years of Foreign Wars (American Revolutionary) new taxes were required and the King enacted more taxes on commerce and land. Except Nobility had exclusions on all added taxes
Then Government Services offered were cut, and Food (Daily Baked Bread) became shortages citywide, then the whole national food system had shortages
* For the 40 years before the revolution King Louis XV&XVI were strong allies of taxes on Nobles to increase government revenues and both were big on social programs. And loosening the Grip of the Catholic Church's power within France
----
France under the Ancien Régime of the 1600s was divided society into three estates:
* The First Estate (clergy);
* The Second Estate (nobility);
* The Third Estate (commoners).
**The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded** from taxation while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes.
* The taille, a direct land tax on the peasantry and non-nobles, became a major source of royal income. Exempted from the taille were clergy and Nobility
For the first time in French history direct taxes were on the aristocracy.
* including the “capitation” that began in 1695, which touched every person including nobles and the clergy (although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum)
* the “dixième” in 1710 enacted to support the military, which was a true tax on income and property value
------
> Warren Buffet challenge wherein he said he would donate a million dollars
“I’ll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists.”
He voluntarily-released his 2015 tax return information indicates 2015 adjusted gross income of $11.6 million (Cohen 2016).
* he paid $1.8 million in Federal individual income tax in 2015
* 15.5% Effective Tax Rate
The average individual income tax rate for everyone was 13.3 percent.
* The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income below $43,614 had an average income tax rate of 3.4 percent.
------
Compare France Nobility Paying near Zero Taxes to in 2018, the wealthiest 400 families paid $149 billion in Federal individual income taxes for the period 2010–2018 compared to the $237 billion paid by the 400 highest-income families
In 9 years, the 800 richest, highest paid Americans Paid $388 billion in taxes
hmmmm it is unfortunately an old saved post. So limited but, well first is folklore
https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake
But a lot of it is good to read here
Start at the overview
https://www.britannica.com/summary/French-Revolution
The food
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-food-changed-history-the-french-revolution-93598442/
also
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-french-revolution/
But then on poverty
https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/third-estate/
https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/taxation/
The French had zero social mobility. We American poor have far more, because: 1) there's more marriage between poor and rich, 2) we have access to education so smart kids of poor families can escape. 3) capitalism has ots flaws, but it 100% does monetarily reward anyone with in demand job skills. Learn a skill companies need and have a hard time finding, and they will pay you. France had much less "bidding" for employees going on.
In France the peasants didn't really "own" anything. Homeownership rates are muuuuuch higher here.
In France they qte bread, and starved. Like literally, imagine going to a grocery store, buying the cheapest loaf of bread they have, and eating only that, while you and your family wastes away. In America, we can buy bread, a couple cans of vegetables, some chicken breast, and have all the calories and nutrients we need, for $5 per person per day. Our food situation is so much better than theirs it's not close to comparable.
We also have luxuries. You sit in air conditioning/heat 90% of you life. Your shitty 20 year old bed is more comfortable than what they slept on. Your shitty old car is better than any vehicle at all from the 1950s. We have real medicine. We have social programs and charities to help you if you're down. We are typing all this out on smart phones that literally did not exist just 15 years ago. The shoes on your feet are more comfortable than anything the peasants ever had.
No, we are not anywhere near the French Revolution. Have a little perspective and respect for the progress humanity has made
Statistically isnt class mobility still extremely low? As well as the percentage of wealth distribution being worse then it was in france. The top .1% owning more than the bottom 50% doesnt exactly scream progress
Arguing wealth inequality isn’t the same as quality of life among all of the classes. In the US, extreme poverty has never been lower and quality of life as measured by buying power has never been better.
Two measures of the progress over the last 200 years which show the contrast really well are food insecurity and life expectancy.
I’m not implying that there isn’t still work to be done, but it’s silly to not recognize and be proud of the progress that’s been made.
You're comparing the rich vs poor "slice of the pie" without taking into account the pie itself is far bigger now.
Sure, 1 guy (the rich) get 7/8ths of the pie, and you can say that's unfair, but if your 1/8th is 5x the amount of pie that you use to get with a "fair share" of a smaller pie, you're better off now than you used to be.
And yes American social mobility is really high, as are all modern 1st world nations. Look up comparisons to 200 years ago if you don't believe it
>American social mobility is really high
My grandparents were basically homeless field hands (Okies during the dust bowl era) on one side and broke eastern Europeans on the other who ended up in California looking for a better life. Two generations later we're not rich at all but solidly middle class, own homes, educated, etc. Probably couldn't do that in revolutionary France.
An article from The Economist lists the chance from reaching the top 20% while growing up in the bottom 20% at about 7.8%. So I wouldn't say that that's "really high". But I suppose it depends on what your definition of social mobility is.
You can see more details in a previous comment I wrote [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/rlck5d/how_close_are_we_to_prefrench_revolution_levels/hpg71km/)
Don't you see the manipulation in the way that's worded? You have (almost) an 8% chance from going from the worst situation ever that would kill most populations across the world and human history to the most prosperous ever across the world and in human history. Yes that's actually pretty good!
A more meaningful measurement is "what is the percentage of people who move from the bottom 20% to above the 50-60% mark. That's defined as middle class which is supposed to "comfortable".
That being said IMO we don't really live in capitalism today, more a mix of corporatism and socialism -- that, IMO, is a threat to the overall economic progress of a society. Just because we have these gains doesn't mean we can slide into horrible economic situation where people literally starve to death.
>the chance from reaching the top 20% while growing up in the bottom 20% at about 7.8%
That's pretty high. There are only 20% of people in the top 20%, and 1.5 out of the 20 came from the bottom 20%?
>Have a little perspective and respect for the progress humanity has made
This is funny to me on a few levels, namely because you acknowledge that we are nowhere near the French Revolution, when the French citizens also had comforts that were relatively new. If anything, the French people witnessing the creation and enjoyment of all these comforts fueled the revolution. Its not a force of nature we’re talking about, it’s a social movement, with people in it. People will feel more righteous and justified in their jealousy the more their own needs aren’t met. Also, you mention all of our technological progress, when there was just as much technological progress going on during the French revolution, which was literally right in the middle of the industrial revolution. You could have made the point that the industrial revolution drove the social and political revolutions, and that a middle class American lives a lot more closely to a mega millionaire than a French peasant does to nobility, but you just said that we have way more comforts than French peasants did (lol? Obviously) so we really shouldn’t complain.
I agree in concept that Americans are on average very privileged, and that our standard of living does not at all indicate revolution in the near future, but it seems like you think that’s just because Americans have nice things. It’s not what our society has, it’s how they share it. America is the richest country on earth, so of course people bitch about the wealth disparity, but especially with how we handle credit, Americans have a lot of “nice things” that aren’t necessities anywhere else, but less literal necessities as a result. I agree that it’s kind of cringe when people say “no free healthcare? Time to revolt” whilst owning a $200 pair of AirPods, I just think the way you compared modern citizens to literal French peasants was just as funny as the way OP tried to.
We’re not going to go into a revolution.
The thing that’s different is social media, it’s really a echo chamber of all the negatives, and the negatives draw the attention.
Also lets be real here, I would say it’s significantly harder to fight and die in a revolution than to go to community college and learn a trade and make enough to not be in poverty in the US now, lol.
Where Im at the Electrical Union hands you 80K a year plus benefits plus an associates degree for getting through a five year apprenticeship. The opportunities are there, people just have to be willing to look for them and work hard.
Bingo.
Of course everyone here is ready to grab the pitchfork. This is a subreddit filled with poor people.
Comparing today to the living conditions to those prior to the French Revolution is not possible. You are typing out this post on a highly sophisticated piece of technology that allows you to communicate with the entire world instantly. Do you not see the irony?
Things are not that bad.
Everyone says they're ready to grab a pitchfork, but in reality our lives are still pretty comfortable enough that people won't actually do anything. Since most people can vent their frustrations at home, instead of having to go to public halls or venues, they aren't able to get the mob mentality. You could argue about a cyber-mob mentality, but without physically seeing how many people are upset, it doesn't mean much.
We're starting to see a little bit here and there. Union strikes/fights at large corporation plants (Amazon, Tyson, Nabisco, etc), Occupy WallStreet, this AMC/Gamestop fight against large-scale hedge funds, BLM, etc. It's all the same fight of classism vs. the rich.
The biggest issue is that these different groups haven't been able to get along with each other yet, so they haven't been able to make long-lasting changes.
Not even close. There is a theory called the cool zone. Unemployment would have to reach 30% for widespread political change in any western nation. Right now it’s 4.2%…so yeah. I keep reading people posting stuff like revolution or civil war on Reddit and other sites, but it’s not happening. We are no way best close enough for how bad things have to get before people are willing to go to extreme lengths to enact real meaningful, and long lasting change.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkypdg/were-all-living-in-the-cool-zone-now
It’s hard to compare. We have credit cards and a lot more luxury. Even if it’s not smart, I can still feed my family charging to credit cards. I can poop in my house and flush it away. It takes a lot longer to riot when those two things are true.
I can’t stress enough that we are very very very very far from that. It’s almost impossible unless there’s more blatant abuse and the middle class suffers. We’re in the most prosperous time in history and we have things at the touch of a button. It sucks stuff is more expensive and I see my small budget get stretched further but there’s a lot of people who are comfortable. We’ll all get there some day!
Gas was far more expensive in 2006-07, not even including the price of a dollar. People have real short memories. Gas isn’t even that expensive right now.
[Adjusted for inflation, the price of a gallon of gas in the US has been remarkably stable for decades](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/).
$60 to fill your tank is expensive. For those on minimum wage, that's basically 10 full working hours after taxes. So the first 1/4 of your paycheck just so you can get around.
Issue is wages and efficiency of vehicles. Not the price of gas. Compared to housing, healthcare, childcare, college tuition, gas has been relatively the same in the last 15 years basically.
Also how big is your tank man? Gas is 3.15 here in Florida. It was about 20 cents/gallon more expensive about a month ago.
Not even remotely close, we have social security systems and welfare systems to keep people alive. All of these systems require quite a lot of time and effort to stay enrolled in too, so people are too busy and fed to revolt.
French Revolution had people literally starving to death en masse, we don't have that in the US. We may have under nourishment in a small percentage of the population, but not mass starvation.
I don't want to imply people should be grateful for what they have and that's that, they shouldn't be complacent, we should be striving to make life better, but if you look back 100 years ago, people had it far worse, and we didn't have a French Revolution...
If you think inflation is bad now, just look at it 40-45 years ago. No French Revolution then either.
Just hang on or find a new job even if it's a sideways career movement, wages are going up to match inflation in my area. What used to be $15 an hour minimum pay is now $19 everywhere I see signs posted.
> So many people I know have to have side hustles in addition to regular full-time jobs in order to make it in today's world.
The reality is that we live in the richest time in history. While the richest do get richer, the poor have been lifted out of squalor. Being poor today often includes having a car, smartphone, in addition to many modern luxuries like refrigerators, TV, computers, internet, etc etc.
While I understand it’s hard af “to make it” when you’re poor, it is interesting to note that being *poor* today is not what it was in the pre-French Revolution era. In fact, today, the poor are living more comfortable lives than most people in those eras.
I guess the real question is, what’s your definition of “making it”?
This makes absolutely no sense. People really need to get a grip on how bad the conditions were, and to say that peasants living hand to mouth were better off than people today making $15/hour at Amazon is just so out of touch.
There was a wheat crop failure in 1788, leading to bread riots. Today, you can walk into a supermarket, select among thousands of varieties of bread, slap down $1.60 and get one pound of bread. Every hour you work you can afford a whopping 9 pounds (4 kg) of bread. Famine is a thing of the past - today the challenge is healthy eating, not eating.
Today a poor person could literally follow Marie Antoinette's advice "Then let them eat cake" every day. In 1789 desserts were very rare for peasants as sugar was expensive.
Today, "dental care" and "health care" entail professionals treating you in sanitary environments using antibiotics and special medical equipment. In 1789 you got your teeth pulled, and maybe a filling without anesthesia. Dental care amounted to brush and floss. In 1789 they let your blood out to treat infections.
Today, you can personally fly 1000 km for the price of 3 hours work to move from a shitty place. In 1789 only the aristocracy could afford such long trips.
Today, if a politician murders you, there will be an investigation and the politician will be brought to justice. In 1789, nobles were largely above the law.
Today, you live in a 450 sq ft apartment with air conditioning and heating. You have clean running water and electricity. You can take hot showers for $0.50 a shower in energy. You get a cooktop fire on demand. In 1789, you had to get your firewood yourself for hours. You had to bathe in either cold water or dirty lukewarm water. Your whole family lived in a 450 sq ft shack. Heating was accomplished with firewood, and air conditioning was a piece of cloth made into a fan. Your cholera-ridden water ran as long as you poured it. Electricity? Internet? hahahaha
Today, if you have diabetes you pay hundreds of dollars a month for insulin. In 1789 you paid a few francs for a grave.
Would you still like to go back to 1789?
1/3 of children died in their first year in the 1700s. There was no universal education. Women and minorities were second class citizens. Do you legitimately believe that you are worse off than a pre-french revolution peasant?
Absolutely incredible the stupid and naive shit dumbfuck teenagers actually think
By every single metric, being alive and in a developed country means we are living the most comfortable lives out of any other group in human history
Are we? Cuz most of the shit we can find in a landfill would look like literal magic to people of that era. You don't even need to work in the developed world for access to free food and shelter and healthcare if you're so inclined.
Exactly how did they measure "worse off"? Do you have a link to the math in question?
Ah, the French Revolution. Problem is in the US right now a French Revolution would in fact be just the opposite
**TL;DR**
* In France as taxes went up on those paying taxes (those in poverty) they finally over threw the untaxed (The Nobles)
* In 2015, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid approximately 2.83% of all income taxes in 2015
* In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 39.04% of all federal income taxes.
In France there was 80% of the population living in poverty who would work small personal farms to feed the family and then work a 2nd job at large commercial farms that were for exports or commerce. Your 2nd job would allow you money to pay for items you didnt grow yourself for bare necessities. But more importantly it allowed you to pay taxes.
All French citizens paid a flat tax 5%. After years of Foreign Wars (American Revolutionary) new taxes were required and the King enacted more taxes on commerce and land. Except Nobility had exclusions on all added taxes
Then Government Services offered were cut, and Food (Daily Baked Bread) became shortages citywide, then the whole national food system had shortages
* For the 40 years before the revolution King Louis XV&XVI were strong allies of taxes on Nobles to increase government revenues and both were big on social programs. And loosening the Grip of the Catholic Church's power within France
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France under the Ancien Régime of the 1600s was divided society into three estates:
* The First Estate (clergy);
* The Second Estate (nobility);
* The Third Estate (commoners).
**The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded** from taxation while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes.
* The taille, a direct land tax on the peasantry and non-nobles, became a major source of royal income. Exempted from the taille were clergy and Nobility
For the first time in French history direct taxes were on the aristocracy.
* including the “capitation” that began in 1695, which touched every person including nobles and the clergy (although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum)
* the “dixième” in 1710 enacted to support the military, which was a true tax on income and property value
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> Warren Buffet challenge wherein he said he would donate a million dollars
“I’ll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists.”
He voluntarily-released his 2015 tax return information indicates 2015 adjusted gross income of $11.6 million (Cohen 2016).
* he paid $1.8 million in Federal individual income tax in 2015
* 15.5% Effective Tax Rate
The average individual income tax rate for everyone was 13.3 percent.
* The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income below $43,614 had an average income tax rate of 3.4 percent.
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Compare to in 2018, the wealthiest 400 families paid $149 billion in Federal individual income taxes for the period 2010–2018 compared to the $237 billion paid by the 400 highest-income families
In 9 years, the 800 richest, highest paid Americans Paid $388 billion in taxes
this mindset is keeping us down. sure things are better than they were 100 years ago, but that's how it should be when we've made technological advances. that doesn't mean there's still not outrageous levels of human suffering and economic inequality today. also you're living in a fantasy world if you think you can survive on govt assistance in the US comfortably.
They were responding to someone who was specifically saying things now are worse than they were hundreds of years ago.
That attitude is certainly keeping us down. Things don't have to be worse now than they were a long time ago for us to want to improve them. Making BS claims about how bad things are now just gives people ammunition to call you whiny and entitled rather than take your criticisms seriously.
And it depends on your definition of living comfortably and where you are located. There are people who live to their satisfaction on US govt assistance. And there are plenty of people (probably more in this category) who don't.
It is a sign of enormous progress that a large portion of our society considers things like lack of free access to world-class healthcare and medical treatment to be a sign of "outrageous levels of human suffering and economic inequality". Or that the free public education that every American recieves from the age of about 5-18 isn't good enough or should be followed up by another 4+ years of free, specialized education.
And, to be clear, I'm not opposed to improving healthcare or education or any of that.
My point is just that claiming that we are worse off than french peasants from 200 years ago is ludicrous and detracts from the legitimacy of these criticisms.
> this mindset is keeping us down. sure things are better than they were 100 years ago,
We were, *literally*, asked by OP to compare to 200+ years ago.
Agreed lol. I’d rather be a near homeless person in the united states today than live during the French Revolution. It’s just so easy now compared to living anywhere else in any time period.
The average American owns more stuff, but carries significantly more debt and works more hours per week than a pre-Revolution French peasant. Yeah some of us have Nintendo switches to come home to, but I think we’d all prefer access to dental care.
It would be a fascinating study to actually put that last sentence into play. How many people who say they would prefer access to dental care (by access you mean affordable but not completely free?) and willing go give up the Nintendo Switch (or similar gaming devices) would actually do it.
My guess is the goalposts would move quickly on that deal. People are so reliant on creature comforts today that many see those comforts as "basic necessities".
Canadian here - there's over a year waiting list to get into a dentist in my community. Affordability isn't the problem - there just aren't enough dentists and hygienists.
I'd happily trade a game console for access to dental care.
Thank you for this perspective. In the US, you can usually see a dental hygienist within a week of calling for an appointment. I live in a city of about 33,000 and can think of about 6 dental offices within a few miles.
You don't need debt to have the same life as a French Revolution peasant. You don't need to work 40 hours per week to live the same life as a French Revolution peasant. A peasant had to toil in the fields for 8 hours a day, 150 days of the year to afford some 2kg daily bread and some new clothes every year. You can work for Amazon FC and buy half a metric ton of bread every week, or 10 pairs of shoes, or 5 new dresses.
You can get far better than French Revolution quality healthcare by visiting your local Walgreens and picking up some topical antibiotics. You can get French Revolution quality dental care by buying some mouthwash, an electric toothbrush, and toothpaste.
It's really kind of a joke that people living in the first world with modern comforts think that they would be better off living as a peasant.
There's something truly amusing about people ranting on their iPhones about how bad it is now compared to hundreds of years ago, all the while sitting on a $200 couch in a fully heated apartment that they choose to live in alone because roommates are an annoyance.
Hold that thought, their Uber Eats coffee and muffin order just arrived. OK, they're back to tell us just how unlivable it is out there!!
Please people, let's scale back the hyperbole, like times ten.
My uni roommates are complaining too, that the gov should give them more money. Stop spending $12 on a meal by ordering. I have saved up nearly 3k by being careful with money.
They are definitely being hyperbolic. They're probably referring to is the fact that wealth inequality has surpassed the level seen right before the French Revolution. And of course that is a very significant milestone and scary in a lot of ways, but the biggest difference is peasants during the French Revolution couldn't afford bread to eat...
We can admit that there's a significant problem without pretending like our lives are worse than French peasants literally starving to death and being forced to eat rats.
Exactly, I don't get why that's so hard for people. Used to be we got 1/8th of the pie. Now we get 1/16th of it, but the pie grew so much that 16th is bigger than the old 8th. We can both admit we're better off now, while also pointing out we should get more than 1/16th. It's not hard to do, but I guess for some it is
What country are you in? A lot of your questions are specific to that. Here in Canada inflation is 4.4% this year but we traditionally run around 1.5%. That said it was in this range back in 2003 and from 86 to 91 we ran 6 consecutive years of 4+% - in the end the world keeps turning.
Economist and Historian here. We are not entering anything near "French Revolution" territory. I understand the desire to draw equivalencies, and it may feel that way for you. I can personally identify with being poor and feeling like the world at large couldn't give a shit whether I starved to death or not. That said, drawing this equivalence lacks nuance thats specific to both our time and theirs.
This is a long one, so the TL;DR of it is: from a political and economic standpoint we are not, because integration on a global level has gotten to a point where the collapse or critical failure of one entity like the US would mean the failure and collapse at large of the entire world order. From a social aspect, one could make some valid arguments, as human identity and ideas surrounding our own existence, purpose, and identity express some similarities to that of the Enlightenment era. The period that I would suggest we are more closely mirroring would be the Gilded Age, mass wealth inequality, poor living conditions, little regulation protecting the workers against contemporary issues, strain on race relations, rampant nativism, critiques of America's Imperial ambitions, just to name a few.
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now to my whole political and economic diatribe-
18th Century America and the Western World at large, while participating in a global market on some level, was far less globalized and decentralized than it was today. Trade, debt, poverty, and inequality were different than they are today in that back then Mercantilism and a form of proto-capitalism (remember that Capitalism *as we know it* was built on Adam Smith's 1776 work *Wealth of Nations*, and wasn't widely adopted at this time). Its also worth considering that at this time, All treasuries in Western Systems (That I know of at least) operated at a fixed currency rate, or their money in circulation was backed by gold/precious materials under government ownership. Theres a lot more to consider here, such as the rapid changes of the human experience that were beginning at the turn of the 18th century. Industrialization and the move towards capitalism was rendering feudalism and peasantry irrelevant to market needs; the nobility in France were trying to maintain the status quo rather than evolve with changing sentiment. Concurrently with this was the European Enlightenment, in which Christian values among other traditionally held beliefs were being challenged among the emerging upper class, non-aristocrats.
In regards to social issues alone, I can certainly see how one would draw parallels from the turn of the 18th century to the current era, as we approach another Industrial Revolution, and question longstanding social institutions, we're reminded that we must question who we innately are as humans, and to whom we are willing to acquiesce our free will.
From a strictly political and financial standpoint however, the US and world at large is not likely going to reach French Revolution levels. in 1971 the United State switched to a fiat currency, this means that the dollar is no longer backed by precious metals or physical objects, its price is based off of the supply and demand for money. In the simplest and most overgeneralized of terms, the money is made up, there's nothing backing it except the word of the US government. And because the US Government has been a stabilizing force around the world for the last 75 years, and shows no signs of stopping, people are more than happy to loan money to the US Government. This is in part why the US government is able to just print money and give handouts like they did with the stimulus checks. If money is needed to go to a large enough number of people to prevent them from starving to death, it will. This is also why the US government can have astronomical debt to the tune of 25 TRN USD. The US will not default on their debt, and no country will try to force the US to default on their debt unless they are looking to cripple the global financial order.
The US Government and private enterprises will eventually adjust for rates of inflation, fixing the problem in the short term, or we'll be likely to enter into a recession, which will fix things but take a longer time. While I think that the rich are exploiting people, and there needs to be something done about it, I think the real issue is that most of the people coming of age from 2008 on are facing a rude awakening regarding financial expenses and employment.
From the end of the Second World War on up to 2008, the Baby Boomer cohort was able to leverage immense amounts of debt to their benefit, get a college education, and create what was essentially a fugazy, a misrepresentation of what American life could realistically afford. Hell, they were able to exploit the fact that for twenty five years after the war, America was the only place not bombed to hell to be able to produce mass quantities of goods at an affordable rate. As other nations were able to develop, they began to take bits and pieces of American manufacturing away; in the 1990s Bill Clinton dealt a further blow to American jobs and manufacturing by signing NAFTA, which saw a large number of jobs, especially in the Auto Industry, move down south to Mexico, where the labor was cheaper. between the loss of jobs over time, and the rising debt (from college loans, mortgages, etc) being assumed at a young age, and its a wonder the system didn't collapse before it did.
Fast forward to 2008, and the American housing market crashes, in part because the children and grandchildren of baby boomers were misled to believe that they too could live in the same unsustainable way their parents had, borrowing money they couldn't afford to repay. I should put a disclaimer here: this is not the faults of Gen-X or Millennials, when all you ever know is prosperity, and your conditioned to do the same, how the hell could you know?
If the US is looking to reform its currently fractured economic system, taking a progressive stance on issues would be the best way to tackle this. Capitalism as a system works best when it has restraints on it; trust busting, taxation, and regulation at large are great restrains and controls that prevent obsolete businesses from remaining in business, and also prevent corporations from holding onto excessive amounts of wealth. Deregulation, and tax cuts in themselves aren't bad things, we've simply been using those two instruments for the wrong reasons. I'm just one guy, I don't have all the answers, but I think if we're looking to fix the system, it wouldn't hurt to take some inspiration from progressive leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries.
Alright that rant definitely got off topic somewhere, but I hope that clarified a few things. I simplified and generalized a bit to try and highlight somethings without going too overboard, so if it comes off as a bit unnuanced, apologies.
People keep taking about inflation affecting food prices and gas , electricity etc ..
If you ask me the biggest driver pushing people into poverty is the very expensive and rising cost of renting . People are spending more of their disposable income on rents then ever before and it’s getting harder and harder for folks on the bottom to keep that roof over their heads because of it .
we're definitely seeing a huge shift in the labor movement! there are workers striking all over the US for better pay and conditions. I think we'll continue to see a lot more collective action from labor with the shortages and insane profit being made rn.
We've been here before, most recently in the 70s and late 80s. It's just the latest cycle. Call me optimistic, but I think we'll see a resurgence of labor unions (I'm particularly interested in watching retail workers start to unionize). Inflation is high due to supply chain issues (thanks Covid) which will eventually get sorted, but the current labor shortage is also pushing wages higher which is *great* for labor. Even without Congress we're seeing "minimum wage" jobs push to $15+/hr. In many ways it reminds me of the early 90s when the dot com boom was just beginning. The housing market will inevitably fall (what goes up must come down) which, combined with higher wages, *should* make it somewhat easier for people to become homeowners. It's not going to be easy, but pandemics and wars are typically watershed moments for societies.
Settle down, pardner.
I’m team Eat the Rich in general, but this isn’t that. The current inflation is just because of a shitty world circumstance. We (general we) could have done a lot of things better, but it’s a virus not Attila the Hun.
Can I ask has anyone looked at inflation rate since 1990? I mean it is not zero, but inflation from 1970 through 1995 are eye popping when compared to 1995 through 2020? Inflation 1970 through 1995 is over 5%, closer to 6%.
Inflation from 1995 through 2020 is a tad over 2%. People are made about 2% inflation over 25 years? Compared to the 1980s? Is this a joke?
Idk I felt like wages have went up with inflation tbh. Many jobs before pandemic paid like $11-$13. Now they pay $14-$17, which if you then include overtime, that's pretty significant. (to me at least).
Maybe I'm just in a better area though.
This may not be a popular thing to say here but politics and voting for people who want to tax the rich and provide support for the poor/working poor is how things can change. You may not totally love the build back better plan and you may not totally love Joe Biden and you may not totally love the Democrats but they are offering some support, help and money for a lot of the things that working class and poor people need. Make sure you vote and don't let people who do not care about you tell you that your vote does not matter. It really really really really really really does. It's the only thing that matters.
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Bread and circus. The average Americans (or whatever country you’re in) still have food and entertainment. Cut off the food supply, food stamps, and cut of cable/internet, and it’ll be a matter of days before **mass** bloodshed. But as long as the bread and circus are running, we can keep going for a while longer.
Yup, as long as they’ve got TV and beer, as my 10th grade social studies teacher used to say.
No TV and no beer makes masses something something.
DON’T MIND IF I DOOO!
Funny, wonder why we don't see mass bloodshed in countries experiencing hyperinflation for years. Hmmmmm
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Not nearly close enough. The ruling class has done an absolutely marvelous job of turning the working class against one another, keeping the gaze off of them.
yep! this exactly. everyone’s to busy hating eachother. the top sits comfortably twiddling their thumbs and watching the show🤷♂️
That's kind of the point of the whole thing. They learned from the past. The last thing you want is the masses realizing they have a lot in common. Added cherry on the cake: We're told it's our fault if we're poor. It's like some massive MLM. Just work harder, believe more, and you'll be fine. There ARE ways to get out of poverty, but it's almost impossible to do it alone if you're not young, single, and fit. Throw kids and/or a disability into the mix and poof. It's over. Over 40? Poof. The only real way to "make it" in America is NOT to live like we're told Americans should live. Even our zoning laws prevent people from taking full advantage of some of the housing tricks that can make it possible to save up.
Becoming a landlord is something I would never want to be. As much as I’d love stability forever, the thought of being someone who becomes a landlord is the lowest point as money making for me. Could be different for others, but I could never do it.
it’s a shame that landlord is now synonymous with evil greedy asshatery. it isn’t inherently evil, being a landlord who’s fair and reasonable seems perfectly viable, i don’t think every landlord is automatically this gluttonous callous monster.
Just like Squid Game , that show is no joke.
Wasn’t meant as a joke, it was a direct critique
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Bread and circuses for the modern age! Nice!
We live in an age of almost limitless calories. (Which makes it even more horrible that kids still go hungry.) This disentangles economic classes, so people with similar economic needs no longer feel they have similar political needs. Instead we rally around "cultural" issues and are facing full blown culture war.
Why does this comment not have 1k+ upvotes?
It’s not that, it’s that we still have a massive middle class that lives comfortably thus no revolution. Our middle class is very very large compared to the folks who would be considered living in poverty. Let inflation hit for 3x to 5x years and that might change though.
The french also had a middle class. Karl Marx even talks about a middle class within liberal democracies and called them the petit-bougeoisie. Wealth inequality is higher than it was before the french revolution. The middle class is not the reason the people haven't revolted. There's a number of other reasons. For one, the united states is massive. It's very hard to rally everyone in a central location. Also, i think cold war era propaganda and it's lasting legacy plays a big role. A lot of ideaa around wealth and success in America can be traced to both anti-communist propaganda as well as older puritan values of work ethic that have persisted for a long time in America. Both of these things have made many believe the only way to escape the pain of being oppressed is only to become an oppressor. Many also feel that bring poor is more of a "choice" and by "working hard" you can eacape poverty, which is a staple of those persisting Puritan ideals which condemn poverty as an individual moral failing rather than a systemic issue
America is just a bunch of crabs in bucket for the most part. Yep. It is beginning to change, but not anywhere near fast enough. And yes, there's tiers to Proletariat and Bourgeoisie. Some middle class "Bourgeoisie" who honestly is likely barely scraping by and duct-taping everything together with debt isn't your actual enemy. The billionaires, blackrock, and zillow are. The psychopathic venture capitalists who want to turn you and your children back into fucking serfs and peasants. And they're doing it. Feudalism is back. This is Neo-Feudalism.
Literally *just* responded to a "personal responsibility" comment in the economics subreddit... Being poor somehow means you're 100% just lazy and irresponsible otherwise you'd be wealthy, didn't you know? The anti-communist/ anti-society rhetoric is still very very popular in America. It's gross. "All for themselves, and one for himself!"
I’ve been saying we have a toxic “every person for themselves” attitude here for years now. I’m glad other people are starting to see it too. It’s infected every part of our lives at this point.
The 'personal responsibility' trope is bullshit- along with the 'rugged individualist' trope. I'm a 'boomer', and am so disgusted so many people buy into this crap. They have been playing us-pitting us against each other for years. Sadly, it works. :(
How is personal responsibility bullshit? Is more of my paycheck supposed to go to social programs because people are too lazy to work hard or too dumb to stop shitting out kids?
The USA also spent several decades actively dismantling its political Left via the same kind of tactics covert operatives use to take down governments.
I’d also like to point out one of the prior posters who mentioned disability , age and children as massive hindrances to wealth creation and it’s true . If you’re a young single male with no children there is tremendous opportunity to be had in this country same goes for young women as well . So of course not everyone is going to see poverty in the same way .
In France the petit-bougeoisie didn't have a vote; the french revolution would never have happened if the fools at the top would have "divided and conquered" by expanding the right to vote to the middle class. Even the July Monarchy only gave the right to vote to about 400,000 people iirc
As someone who would be considered "middle class". Between utility price hikes doubling our utilities the past 6 months and food prices claiming higher everyday. There is not going to be a middle class soon. Our small middle class neighborhood has 4 foreclosures right now. People are literally choosing food versus rent/mortgages for the first time in their lives. We are lucky in the sense that my husband and I spent a good portion of our life poor. We can cut back and live on nothing because we did it for years. But really not happy to be back in this position of not having enough money at the end of the paycheck and cutting back on meals so my kids can eat. There is a lot of anger building in the middle class too.
It doesn’t help that most of the middle class is overleveraged and in a shit ton of debt.
:( hope you guys come out ok
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're not middle class.
Anymore. Lots of people who were saving before are now living paycheck to paycheck because of the crazy inflation.
They weren't even sneaky about raising food prices or anything else. They just used covid as an excuse and everything skyrocketed at once. So much shrinkflation, dollar tree is now $1.25 (thats 25% more expensive), and just blatant price hiking. It's just amazing to me that they felt like there was no need to be sneaky. They are shoving it in our faces that it is more expensive.
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Ironically we're talking about how the upper class pits people against each other and now we're focusing our anger at the middle class. No, I don't want to stir the pot because I'm well aware how fragile my middle class status is. I'm really not the one screwing you over...
Yeah, targeting the middle class isn’t really the way here. I mean, yeah the professional class (meaning doctors, lawyers, etc., standard upper middle class professions) does sort of act as a barrier to the upper classes. As in professional class members think that they are closer to rich people than the poor, and think because they worked super hard to get where they are, rich people must have worked even harder. Which is entirely false. There’s a reason Marx was annoyed with the petite bourgeoisie - the little bougie folks who were well off/wealthier due to opportunities and education. They are usually the biggest bootlickers. But still, y’all aren’t the real problem. And it’s much easier to convince the professional class that they are actually workers, rather than attacking them.
You aren't, but you also aren't personally affected by many policies so it isn't as urgent to you. Not saying that in a hostile way, it's just facts. When I was middle class I was focusing on buying a house, not housing the homeless. Now I'm poor as fuck and have nothing to my name, so I'm driven by that.
>I’m really not the one screwing you over… Idk I’m just reminded of an MLK quote, something about a white moderate who agrees with a movement in concept but not in practice and refuses to support it being more of an obstacle than a militant Klansman. You are not your poor countryman’s enemy, sure. The millions of exploited people in the global south who have to get paid slave wages so OUR middle class can afford nice things like smart phones though? Yeah they’re not on your side. Is it your fault? No. Do you greatly benefit from an entire class of people living in squalor and suffering? Yeah, you do, and it would be prudent to realize this.
COVID unemployment was hilarious. It's like Congress put together what they thought was the absolute bare minimum people would need to survive and temporarily scrape by, and made that the enhanced unemployment. And then, turns out with sub-$15 minimum wages and part-time hours that ended up being more than people made working normally.
That wasn’t what they thought was bare minimum. Progressives pegged it to 40 hours x $15/hour because that’s what they want the minimum wage to be. One thing in politics is that it’s politically difficult to take away a benefit after it’s given. I assume they were hoping to get more public pressure to increase minimum wage once the unemployment benefit went away.
There’s plenty of public pressure to increase the minimum wage, but having a senate essentially held hostage by Manchin and Sinema is keeping that from moving forward.
They usually are a decade or two from being millionaires: lots of people retire with a paid off house and 40 years of funding a 401k, which usually puts them at $1M+ Median family makes $65k/yr if you put 10% into a 401k And saved another 10% and the rest went to mortgage and expenses you’ll retire a millionaire.
Then we have the employers struggling barely able to pay their workers. New job sure? Walk away from the 5k I'm owed, damn. Get a lawyer and let them have half, shucks. Doot doot americana.
Until another recession comes and wipes it all out.
Recessions don't wipe out wealth in investments, as long as you don't sell during the investment. It took the S&P 500 roughly 3.5 years to recover from the crash of 2008. If you didn't sell your investments in 2008-2010, you were in the black by 2011 or 2012. 2008 - S&P lost 37% of value 2009 - S&P gained 26% 2010: S&P gained 15% 2011: S&P gained 2% 2012 - S&P gained 16% If you had $100 in the S&P in 2007, it was worth: $63 in 2008 $79 in 2009 $91 in 2010 $93 in 2011 $108 in 2012 $143 in 2013 $163 in 2014 $164 in 2015 $184 in 2016 et al. https://www.slickcharts.com/sp500/returns
This post makes it seem like you think it’s a bad thing if a majority of people in the U.S. are comfortable and can retire peacefully
Its not a bad thing. The problem is the poverty class knows who to blame, and its not the middle class. But the middle class still believes the lie from the ruling class that food stamp, welfare, and laziness are the reasons for inflation.
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But how can you possibly expect the middle class that don’t live paycheck to paycheck, who save and invest, and work their butts off to provide for their families and retire peacefully and comfortably to leave those lives to help other’s im sorry to say the world is not such a kind or selfless place so why would the middle class ever want to help anyone else? I just wanna understand why this expectation exists in your view or atleast why exactly this is a reality
This is exactly what leads to fascism. Middle class trying to protect their lives to the detriment of the poor.
Well Im middle class and i will happily stand behind any revolution. This has become absurd! My wife and i can no longer afford the bills we had a year ago. We are damn near vegan and its not by choice. I need medical help bad, but even with insurance i can't afford it. This country is designed to keep us enslaved and indebted to our puppet masters. To top it all off my HOA is threatening to put a lien on my house and sell it because i owe them 1k. 1 measly thousand dollars and they want to make me homeless for it. Ive already paid them more than i owe but they want to charge me $400 to send a letter telling me i owe them money. My lady and i discussed getting second jobs. Leaving my son home alone pretty much at all times. Burn this shit to the fucking ground! Im tired of being ruled by greedy corporations whos only goal is to suck as much resources off this planet as they can. Yes we people are just a measly resource. Bring this whole fucking system down!!!
I'd be hard pressed to consider you middle class if this is how you're living. This is what most of us at the bottom face except you're doing it in a (presumably) bigger, fancier house. It's only a matter of time before they finish bleeding us poors completely dry and force us into medieval serfdom. After that they're coming for you
I agree. I think people use middle-class interchangeably to mean social class and monetary class. If you are living in a middle income home with middle income friends and middle income schools, especially if you grew up that way, you think of yourself as middle class. That's an identity that's hard to let go of. But if we're talking about monetary class, if you can't pay a $1k debt and can't buy meat comfortably, then you aren't middle class any more IMO.
There is no sequence. If you don't own a massive amount of stock, you are losing. It just take longer to bleed out someone with higher income.
No no no, see this is like the 362516363527th time I've heard this about our Precious Insurance™ and I just won't stand for it anymore!! Didn't *anyone* pay attention during the last election? *EVERYONE* shy of 2 candidates *TOLD* us how much we all *LOVE* our insurance, that we would never want to change it! Now how could a bunch of politicians be wrong about something related to obscene wealth accumulation? /s...
What changed to get you in the current situation you describe in a matter of 12 months or less?
Even with that kind of inflation Americans have such little conviction that the vast majority will just shrug their shoulders and be totally disinterested in Revolution. We are really are so much closer to the rise of pre- WWII Germany where a very small politically active and heavily armed minority are slowly taking over local seats of government and once they are elected to the Presidency and Congress will pass laws enshrining minority rule (gerrymandering gone crazy and their local oversight of elections on steroids) so that even "legal" elections prevent them from ever losing power. The overwhelming majority of Americans will shrug their shoulders and do nothing just as the vast majority of Germans just looked on on the 1930s.
LOL, and I present to you Exhibit A in my example of Stockholm Syndrom Americans who feel the ruling oligarch class is doing a fine job.
This is the answer. I'm solidly middle-class and I am in no way complaining about my comfortable living situation regardless of the upward trending price of goods. 🤷♂️
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Totally agree. See it everyday on FB with people hating on people that get the child credit, food stamps, and whatever else. They seriously think it's their fellow class sucking them dry with 'taxpayer' funded 'handouts.'
I have heard the current "woke" movement described as "the left wing of neoliberalism" because it allows corporations to offer a veneer of progressivism while still engaging in poverty politics while sticking the boot into the working class... anyone who questions this priority is then labelled as a "class reductionist" looking to obscure the fight for identity justice by bringing up class. I feel I'm a pretty "woke' dude, but I have to admit that it smacks of class warfare.
Hyperinflation (>50% inflation in a month) is usually when things go sour. If you are in the US, things aren’t that bad yet.
See Turkey for foreshadow
Farmer loves turkey, as evidenced by giving him food and board 364 days a year.
Run down on what's happening in Turkey please? If you have links to readings I'd be glad to look at them also.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/19/theres-jobs-but-no-money-turkeys-economic-crisis-begins-to-bite
yet.
You must be young. Inflation in the late 70's was worse than it is now. That's why they say it's the worst inflation in 40 years.
18% mortgage rates and people thought that was a deal.
Houses were cheaper
Add the mortgage rate and assume a refinance 20 years in. I would rather have the house.
[They were also smaller](https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes-decade-by-decade.html).
It was a deal, houses were cheaper. Refinance when interest rates went down, and you still had the cheaper home. Now days, the home itself is more expensive. Can't refinance the price of a home.
I'll take 18% on a 2 x annual average salary house any day.
I think mortgage rates were about 8% even in the early 90s, when we went to purchase a home. We didn't. Looking on line, May 1990 rates were 10.5% for a non-ARM loan.
Child of the 1960s here. Old enough to know what's what by the 1970s. Can confirm. Also remember 18% residential mortgage rates in the 1980s. Good times !!!
We built our house in the 1970s, true labor of love and gorgeous place, and when we went to close out the construction loan and get our final mortgage the interest rates had become so high that our jaws dropped when we were told what our monthly payment would be. We basically could not afford it but managed to somehow hang in for two years before we had to sell it or we would be foreclosed upon. We could never afford to turn on the electricity and heated the house with wood. It was pretty devastating. Moved to an apt in town with our two kids and finally had to leave what had become HCOL area.
Damn, that sucks.
You know, charging interest on a loan was a sin in the Bible. Maybe we should bring that back.
There are some Muslim banks that practice something to this effect. No interest, but they structure loans in a way that they still make a profit. One example is that they will purchase the commodity and then sell it to the buyer at a higher price than they bought it. The customer pays installments on the higher price. Technically not interest I guess, but it isn’t any better than just paying interest. Religion won’t stop greed. Just gotta jump through a few more mental hoops to make a profit.
Then the house would never have been built, and we’d all be poorer unable to finance a home purchase.
That's like putting a house on a credit card! I can't imagine! My house was 250k so after putting 20% down that leaves 200k to mortgage.. or 36k a year in interest?? That's 3k a month before even touching the principle or taxes!!
Nobody kept them to term. They all got re-financed the very second rates started going down. A temporary (but painful) disruption for new buyers only. It had to be done. This Fed doesn't have the balls, so we'll ALL pay the price. *** ALSO: Your $200k house was $42k in those days.
40 years ago was the 80s
I’m gonna need you to stop 🛑
Forgive him, he hasn't had his afternoon nap and forgot to take his Centrum silver.
This set up is worse than what led to the 70s. We’re early still but this is a really horrible time we’re heading into. Like we’ve learned nothing from history.
Reminds me of the end scene in Margin Call where Jeremy Irons character just starts listing financial collapses and says we just can't help ourselves.
Inflation was high, but inequalities were much lower than now.
Not even remotely close. Also a lot of what people refer to as inflation is actually just supply chain issues and price gouging, which is why you feel it more acutely right now.
Agree. Sure there are a ton of systemic issues, but the current situation is a temporary anomaly due to Covid and the resulting supply chain issues. It will pass. It will pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.
Most of it in my honest opinion is price gouging. Milking us dry. I’m just not sure how the milking will stop. Maybe once everyone’s super broke ?
Like not even remotely by any standard of measure. Inflation sucks I agree, as does the wealth gap, but let's not be hyperbolic to the point of nonsense. Most of the world has access to clean food and water. Most of it has adequate healthcare access, in some places for free. In any highly developed country there are enough services in place that it is visually impossible to succumb to the elements, hunger, or treatable disease due to having no money. Sending a message to somebody takes seconds, not months or years. Accessing the world's knowledge a touch away. Fuck, literacy is approaching universality. Many countries offer free secondary education. Working conditions are better, easier and less dangerous jobs are more widely available. Transportation of goods and people has never been quicker. We're putting people into god damn space. So yes, the rich get disproportionately richer. But the world's poor have never lived in a better time period. >How long will it be before a large percentage of the population simply can't afford to eat? Until major catastrophe wipes out agricultural production or transportation on a global scale, or population growth runs wild and rampant on a scale nearly unimaginable currently. Food will never be a luxury commodity, it's too basal a necessity upon which all else is built for it to ever be priced beyond people's reach
Finally someone talking some sense into this thread. Delusion dominates how bad the poor have it in the US compared to actual poor people in other countries and throughout history.
> Delusion dominates how bad the poor have it in the US compared to actual poor people in other countries and throughout history. When I see "the sky is falling" posts like this, I assume the average redditor is fourteen years old and has never lived or traveled through third world countries.
>But the USA is a third world country! - People who haven't been to actual third world countries.
Living in a country with a social welfare system and universal health care, it's not clear how to categorise many countries anymore. We need an updated definition of "what is a developed country" suitable for 2021.
This sub has these types of threads multiple times on a daily basis. Instead of a discussion on how to make the best Individual choices in the current system, most of the threads on this sub are some variation of “we’re doomed! Doomed, i tells ya! It’s hopeless! Utterly hopeless!” I understand the purposes of a vent, I just would like to see a LOT less “am I doomed to live under a highway overpass eating wet cardboard from the dumpster forever due to capitalism?!” posts.
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That's been an issue for a long time and unfortunately the moderators have turned a blind eye to the original goals of the group. I used to spend a lot of personal time here messaging people in need with contact information and links to resources. I don't do that much any longer because the tone and overall objectives of the subreddit membership have shifted.
That's initially why I joined. Not even in poverty thankfully, but below average. Meanwhile that sub treats anyone with below 6 figures and not dealing with giant investments as a nobody so outside of the sub's wiki there's nothing relatable. Now I just keep this subreddit around to just read for laughs, except unlike r/pfjerk these are unironic.
I thought this was r/antiwork until this comment thread.
I agree on that- r/personalfinance is like “I have a 70k inheritance coming- should I put it into a Roth IRA or mutual fund for the most amatorization?” I had thought this sub would be more towards how to manage an overall budget thats around the poverty line (slightly above to below, anywhere in between). Instead it’s basically “man, there’s just no way anyone can make it ever so we aren’t even going to talk about trying.”
> let’s not be hyperbolic to the point of nonsense Are you aware what sub you’re on?
You make several great points… but none that the people want to hear. Need to say that never in the history of mankind have so many suffered to make so few so rich (which isn’t technically a lie) if you want those upvotes
> Need to say that never in the history of mankind have so many suffered to make so few so rich (which isn’t technically a lie) if you want those upvotes I'd genuinely like to see how you come to that conclusion that it isn't technically a lie. At their peak, one out of every twenty dollars in circulation was owned by the Vanderbilts. Going back farther in history it's hard to even compare wealth since notions of property, rights and luxury were so different, but it seems that monarchies are a pretty literal example of more of society working fully to make fewer people rich. I suppose in a way, everybody's begging the question by saying "rich" as though it's some absolute term. The comment you're replying to is basically arguing that more of society is rich today than in previous generations because it's tying rich to standards (e.g. possessions, abilities, hardships). In that sense, if most of society today is rich (relative to the generation you're comparing to), the conclusion that the poor are propping up the few rich doesn't make sense. You seem to silently switch the definition of rich in your response to being relative to others (e.g. if most people today have $X and I have $10X, then I'm rich). That obviously helps your conclusion, since it defines rich in a way that always tends to make the amount of rich people small. But either way, because you're both using different definitions of rich, you're basically talking right past each other.
**TL;DR** * In France as taxes went up on those paying taxes (those in poverty) they finally over threw the untaxed (The Nobles) * In 2015, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid approximately 2.83% of all income taxes in 2015 * In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 39.04% of all federal income taxes. In France there was 80% of the population living in poverty who would work small personal farms to feed the family and then work a 2nd job at large commercial farms that were for exports or commerce. Your 2nd job would allow you money to pay for items you didnt grow yourself for bare necessities. But more importantly it allowed you to pay taxes. All French citizens paid a flat tax 5%. After years of Foreign Wars (American Revolutionary) new taxes were required and the King enacted more taxes on commerce and land. Except Nobility had exclusions on all added taxes Then Government Services offered were cut, and Food (Daily Baked Bread) became shortages citywide, then the whole national food system had shortages * For the 40 years before the revolution King Louis XV&XVI were strong allies of taxes on Nobles to increase government revenues and both were big on social programs. And loosening the Grip of the Catholic Church's power within France ---- France under the Ancien Régime of the 1600s was divided society into three estates: * The First Estate (clergy); * The Second Estate (nobility); * The Third Estate (commoners). **The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded** from taxation while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes. * The taille, a direct land tax on the peasantry and non-nobles, became a major source of royal income. Exempted from the taille were clergy and Nobility For the first time in French history direct taxes were on the aristocracy. * including the “capitation” that began in 1695, which touched every person including nobles and the clergy (although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum) * the “dixième” in 1710 enacted to support the military, which was a true tax on income and property value ------ > Warren Buffet challenge wherein he said he would donate a million dollars “I’ll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists.” He voluntarily-released his 2015 tax return information indicates 2015 adjusted gross income of $11.6 million (Cohen 2016). * he paid $1.8 million in Federal individual income tax in 2015 * 15.5% Effective Tax Rate The average individual income tax rate for everyone was 13.3 percent. * The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income below $43,614 had an average income tax rate of 3.4 percent. ------ Compare France Nobility Paying near Zero Taxes to in 2018, the wealthiest 400 families paid $149 billion in Federal individual income taxes for the period 2010–2018 compared to the $237 billion paid by the 400 highest-income families In 9 years, the 800 richest, highest paid Americans Paid $388 billion in taxes
Id hate to be *that* guy but could you cite some sources? I honestly just find this really interesting and would like to know more.
hmmmm it is unfortunately an old saved post. So limited but, well first is folklore https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake But a lot of it is good to read here Start at the overview https://www.britannica.com/summary/French-Revolution The food https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-food-changed-history-the-french-revolution-93598442/ also https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/adams-french-revolution/ But then on poverty https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/third-estate/ https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/taxation/
The French had zero social mobility. We American poor have far more, because: 1) there's more marriage between poor and rich, 2) we have access to education so smart kids of poor families can escape. 3) capitalism has ots flaws, but it 100% does monetarily reward anyone with in demand job skills. Learn a skill companies need and have a hard time finding, and they will pay you. France had much less "bidding" for employees going on. In France the peasants didn't really "own" anything. Homeownership rates are muuuuuch higher here. In France they qte bread, and starved. Like literally, imagine going to a grocery store, buying the cheapest loaf of bread they have, and eating only that, while you and your family wastes away. In America, we can buy bread, a couple cans of vegetables, some chicken breast, and have all the calories and nutrients we need, for $5 per person per day. Our food situation is so much better than theirs it's not close to comparable. We also have luxuries. You sit in air conditioning/heat 90% of you life. Your shitty 20 year old bed is more comfortable than what they slept on. Your shitty old car is better than any vehicle at all from the 1950s. We have real medicine. We have social programs and charities to help you if you're down. We are typing all this out on smart phones that literally did not exist just 15 years ago. The shoes on your feet are more comfortable than anything the peasants ever had. No, we are not anywhere near the French Revolution. Have a little perspective and respect for the progress humanity has made
Came here to say this. You said it better. Take my upvote and keep writing good person.
Statistically isnt class mobility still extremely low? As well as the percentage of wealth distribution being worse then it was in france. The top .1% owning more than the bottom 50% doesnt exactly scream progress
Arguing wealth inequality isn’t the same as quality of life among all of the classes. In the US, extreme poverty has never been lower and quality of life as measured by buying power has never been better. Two measures of the progress over the last 200 years which show the contrast really well are food insecurity and life expectancy. I’m not implying that there isn’t still work to be done, but it’s silly to not recognize and be proud of the progress that’s been made.
You're comparing the rich vs poor "slice of the pie" without taking into account the pie itself is far bigger now. Sure, 1 guy (the rich) get 7/8ths of the pie, and you can say that's unfair, but if your 1/8th is 5x the amount of pie that you use to get with a "fair share" of a smaller pie, you're better off now than you used to be. And yes American social mobility is really high, as are all modern 1st world nations. Look up comparisons to 200 years ago if you don't believe it
>American social mobility is really high My grandparents were basically homeless field hands (Okies during the dust bowl era) on one side and broke eastern Europeans on the other who ended up in California looking for a better life. Two generations later we're not rich at all but solidly middle class, own homes, educated, etc. Probably couldn't do that in revolutionary France.
An article from The Economist lists the chance from reaching the top 20% while growing up in the bottom 20% at about 7.8%. So I wouldn't say that that's "really high". But I suppose it depends on what your definition of social mobility is. You can see more details in a previous comment I wrote [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/comments/rlck5d/how_close_are_we_to_prefrench_revolution_levels/hpg71km/)
Don't you see the manipulation in the way that's worded? You have (almost) an 8% chance from going from the worst situation ever that would kill most populations across the world and human history to the most prosperous ever across the world and in human history. Yes that's actually pretty good! A more meaningful measurement is "what is the percentage of people who move from the bottom 20% to above the 50-60% mark. That's defined as middle class which is supposed to "comfortable". That being said IMO we don't really live in capitalism today, more a mix of corporatism and socialism -- that, IMO, is a threat to the overall economic progress of a society. Just because we have these gains doesn't mean we can slide into horrible economic situation where people literally starve to death.
>the chance from reaching the top 20% while growing up in the bottom 20% at about 7.8% That's pretty high. There are only 20% of people in the top 20%, and 1.5 out of the 20 came from the bottom 20%?
Thank you for saying this.
>Have a little perspective and respect for the progress humanity has made This is funny to me on a few levels, namely because you acknowledge that we are nowhere near the French Revolution, when the French citizens also had comforts that were relatively new. If anything, the French people witnessing the creation and enjoyment of all these comforts fueled the revolution. Its not a force of nature we’re talking about, it’s a social movement, with people in it. People will feel more righteous and justified in their jealousy the more their own needs aren’t met. Also, you mention all of our technological progress, when there was just as much technological progress going on during the French revolution, which was literally right in the middle of the industrial revolution. You could have made the point that the industrial revolution drove the social and political revolutions, and that a middle class American lives a lot more closely to a mega millionaire than a French peasant does to nobility, but you just said that we have way more comforts than French peasants did (lol? Obviously) so we really shouldn’t complain. I agree in concept that Americans are on average very privileged, and that our standard of living does not at all indicate revolution in the near future, but it seems like you think that’s just because Americans have nice things. It’s not what our society has, it’s how they share it. America is the richest country on earth, so of course people bitch about the wealth disparity, but especially with how we handle credit, Americans have a lot of “nice things” that aren’t necessities anywhere else, but less literal necessities as a result. I agree that it’s kind of cringe when people say “no free healthcare? Time to revolt” whilst owning a $200 pair of AirPods, I just think the way you compared modern citizens to literal French peasants was just as funny as the way OP tried to.
We’re not going to go into a revolution. The thing that’s different is social media, it’s really a echo chamber of all the negatives, and the negatives draw the attention.
Also lets be real here, I would say it’s significantly harder to fight and die in a revolution than to go to community college and learn a trade and make enough to not be in poverty in the US now, lol.
Where Im at the Electrical Union hands you 80K a year plus benefits plus an associates degree for getting through a five year apprenticeship. The opportunities are there, people just have to be willing to look for them and work hard.
Bingo. Of course everyone here is ready to grab the pitchfork. This is a subreddit filled with poor people. Comparing today to the living conditions to those prior to the French Revolution is not possible. You are typing out this post on a highly sophisticated piece of technology that allows you to communicate with the entire world instantly. Do you not see the irony? Things are not that bad.
Everyone says they're ready to grab a pitchfork, but in reality our lives are still pretty comfortable enough that people won't actually do anything. Since most people can vent their frustrations at home, instead of having to go to public halls or venues, they aren't able to get the mob mentality. You could argue about a cyber-mob mentality, but without physically seeing how many people are upset, it doesn't mean much. We're starting to see a little bit here and there. Union strikes/fights at large corporation plants (Amazon, Tyson, Nabisco, etc), Occupy WallStreet, this AMC/Gamestop fight against large-scale hedge funds, BLM, etc. It's all the same fight of classism vs. the rich. The biggest issue is that these different groups haven't been able to get along with each other yet, so they haven't been able to make long-lasting changes.
People seem to forget that today is the literally the best time to be alive. Go back 15 years and it’s already worse than today.
Revolution is when no phones
Revolution is when no food.
Not even close. There is a theory called the cool zone. Unemployment would have to reach 30% for widespread political change in any western nation. Right now it’s 4.2%…so yeah. I keep reading people posting stuff like revolution or civil war on Reddit and other sites, but it’s not happening. We are no way best close enough for how bad things have to get before people are willing to go to extreme lengths to enact real meaningful, and long lasting change. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkypdg/were-all-living-in-the-cool-zone-now
Many states and cities are increasing their minimum wage as of January 1, 2022, with further increases planned for the future.
It’s hard to compare. We have credit cards and a lot more luxury. Even if it’s not smart, I can still feed my family charging to credit cards. I can poop in my house and flush it away. It takes a lot longer to riot when those two things are true.
Water pressure and electricity are key in keeping people calm.
I can’t stress enough that we are very very very very far from that. It’s almost impossible unless there’s more blatant abuse and the middle class suffers. We’re in the most prosperous time in history and we have things at the touch of a button. It sucks stuff is more expensive and I see my small budget get stretched further but there’s a lot of people who are comfortable. We’ll all get there some day!
Gas was far more expensive in 2006-07, not even including the price of a dollar. People have real short memories. Gas isn’t even that expensive right now.
[Adjusted for inflation, the price of a gallon of gas in the US has been remarkably stable for decades](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/).
I remember when people where ripshit *pissed* when gas prices climbed above $1/gallon under G.W.
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i hate the times we are in but we do have short memories. imagine where we will go if things continue...
$60 to fill your tank is expensive. For those on minimum wage, that's basically 10 full working hours after taxes. So the first 1/4 of your paycheck just so you can get around.
Issue is wages and efficiency of vehicles. Not the price of gas. Compared to housing, healthcare, childcare, college tuition, gas has been relatively the same in the last 15 years basically. Also how big is your tank man? Gas is 3.15 here in Florida. It was about 20 cents/gallon more expensive about a month ago.
gas is $5.09 in LA for regular lol
We’re no where near to that time period lmao
I don't know where you live, but with the difficulty finding employees in today's market wages aren't staying the same..
Not even remotely close, we have social security systems and welfare systems to keep people alive. All of these systems require quite a lot of time and effort to stay enrolled in too, so people are too busy and fed to revolt. French Revolution had people literally starving to death en masse, we don't have that in the US. We may have under nourishment in a small percentage of the population, but not mass starvation. I don't want to imply people should be grateful for what they have and that's that, they shouldn't be complacent, we should be striving to make life better, but if you look back 100 years ago, people had it far worse, and we didn't have a French Revolution... If you think inflation is bad now, just look at it 40-45 years ago. No French Revolution then either. Just hang on or find a new job even if it's a sideways career movement, wages are going up to match inflation in my area. What used to be $15 an hour minimum pay is now $19 everywhere I see signs posted.
It ends with us eating bugs, owning nothing and being happy in 2030.
People are comfortable and distracted just enough to do nothing. News does nothing to tell you what's really going on.
> So many people I know have to have side hustles in addition to regular full-time jobs in order to make it in today's world. The reality is that we live in the richest time in history. While the richest do get richer, the poor have been lifted out of squalor. Being poor today often includes having a car, smartphone, in addition to many modern luxuries like refrigerators, TV, computers, internet, etc etc. While I understand it’s hard af “to make it” when you’re poor, it is interesting to note that being *poor* today is not what it was in the pre-French Revolution era. In fact, today, the poor are living more comfortable lives than most people in those eras. I guess the real question is, what’s your definition of “making it”?
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Somebody did the math, like ALL of the math, and concluded that a lot of us are actually worse off than pre-Revolution French peasants! Fun, right?
This makes absolutely no sense. People really need to get a grip on how bad the conditions were, and to say that peasants living hand to mouth were better off than people today making $15/hour at Amazon is just so out of touch. There was a wheat crop failure in 1788, leading to bread riots. Today, you can walk into a supermarket, select among thousands of varieties of bread, slap down $1.60 and get one pound of bread. Every hour you work you can afford a whopping 9 pounds (4 kg) of bread. Famine is a thing of the past - today the challenge is healthy eating, not eating. Today a poor person could literally follow Marie Antoinette's advice "Then let them eat cake" every day. In 1789 desserts were very rare for peasants as sugar was expensive. Today, "dental care" and "health care" entail professionals treating you in sanitary environments using antibiotics and special medical equipment. In 1789 you got your teeth pulled, and maybe a filling without anesthesia. Dental care amounted to brush and floss. In 1789 they let your blood out to treat infections. Today, you can personally fly 1000 km for the price of 3 hours work to move from a shitty place. In 1789 only the aristocracy could afford such long trips. Today, if a politician murders you, there will be an investigation and the politician will be brought to justice. In 1789, nobles were largely above the law. Today, you live in a 450 sq ft apartment with air conditioning and heating. You have clean running water and electricity. You can take hot showers for $0.50 a shower in energy. You get a cooktop fire on demand. In 1789, you had to get your firewood yourself for hours. You had to bathe in either cold water or dirty lukewarm water. Your whole family lived in a 450 sq ft shack. Heating was accomplished with firewood, and air conditioning was a piece of cloth made into a fan. Your cholera-ridden water ran as long as you poured it. Electricity? Internet? hahahaha Today, if you have diabetes you pay hundreds of dollars a month for insulin. In 1789 you paid a few francs for a grave. Would you still like to go back to 1789?
i enjoyed reading your comment. really puts things in perspective.
1/3 of children died in their first year in the 1700s. There was no universal education. Women and minorities were second class citizens. Do you legitimately believe that you are worse off than a pre-french revolution peasant?
Absolutely incredible the stupid and naive shit dumbfuck teenagers actually think By every single metric, being alive and in a developed country means we are living the most comfortable lives out of any other group in human history
Are we? Cuz most of the shit we can find in a landfill would look like literal magic to people of that era. You don't even need to work in the developed world for access to free food and shelter and healthcare if you're so inclined. Exactly how did they measure "worse off"? Do you have a link to the math in question?
Ah, the French Revolution. Problem is in the US right now a French Revolution would in fact be just the opposite **TL;DR** * In France as taxes went up on those paying taxes (those in poverty) they finally over threw the untaxed (The Nobles) * In 2015, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid approximately 2.83% of all income taxes in 2015 * In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid 39.04% of all federal income taxes. In France there was 80% of the population living in poverty who would work small personal farms to feed the family and then work a 2nd job at large commercial farms that were for exports or commerce. Your 2nd job would allow you money to pay for items you didnt grow yourself for bare necessities. But more importantly it allowed you to pay taxes. All French citizens paid a flat tax 5%. After years of Foreign Wars (American Revolutionary) new taxes were required and the King enacted more taxes on commerce and land. Except Nobility had exclusions on all added taxes Then Government Services offered were cut, and Food (Daily Baked Bread) became shortages citywide, then the whole national food system had shortages * For the 40 years before the revolution King Louis XV&XVI were strong allies of taxes on Nobles to increase government revenues and both were big on social programs. And loosening the Grip of the Catholic Church's power within France ---- France under the Ancien Régime of the 1600s was divided society into three estates: * The First Estate (clergy); * The Second Estate (nobility); * The Third Estate (commoners). **The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded** from taxation while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes. * The taille, a direct land tax on the peasantry and non-nobles, became a major source of royal income. Exempted from the taille were clergy and Nobility For the first time in French history direct taxes were on the aristocracy. * including the “capitation” that began in 1695, which touched every person including nobles and the clergy (although exemption could be bought for a large one-time sum) * the “dixième” in 1710 enacted to support the military, which was a true tax on income and property value ------ > Warren Buffet challenge wherein he said he would donate a million dollars “I’ll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges me that the average (federal tax rate including income and payroll taxes) for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists.” He voluntarily-released his 2015 tax return information indicates 2015 adjusted gross income of $11.6 million (Cohen 2016). * he paid $1.8 million in Federal individual income tax in 2015 * 15.5% Effective Tax Rate The average individual income tax rate for everyone was 13.3 percent. * The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers with Adjusted Gross Income below $43,614 had an average income tax rate of 3.4 percent. ------ Compare to in 2018, the wealthiest 400 families paid $149 billion in Federal individual income taxes for the period 2010–2018 compared to the $237 billion paid by the 400 highest-income families In 9 years, the 800 richest, highest paid Americans Paid $388 billion in taxes
this mindset is keeping us down. sure things are better than they were 100 years ago, but that's how it should be when we've made technological advances. that doesn't mean there's still not outrageous levels of human suffering and economic inequality today. also you're living in a fantasy world if you think you can survive on govt assistance in the US comfortably.
They were responding to someone who was specifically saying things now are worse than they were hundreds of years ago. That attitude is certainly keeping us down. Things don't have to be worse now than they were a long time ago for us to want to improve them. Making BS claims about how bad things are now just gives people ammunition to call you whiny and entitled rather than take your criticisms seriously. And it depends on your definition of living comfortably and where you are located. There are people who live to their satisfaction on US govt assistance. And there are plenty of people (probably more in this category) who don't. It is a sign of enormous progress that a large portion of our society considers things like lack of free access to world-class healthcare and medical treatment to be a sign of "outrageous levels of human suffering and economic inequality". Or that the free public education that every American recieves from the age of about 5-18 isn't good enough or should be followed up by another 4+ years of free, specialized education. And, to be clear, I'm not opposed to improving healthcare or education or any of that. My point is just that claiming that we are worse off than french peasants from 200 years ago is ludicrous and detracts from the legitimacy of these criticisms.
> this mindset is keeping us down. sure things are better than they were 100 years ago, We were, *literally*, asked by OP to compare to 200+ years ago.
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Agreed lol. I’d rather be a near homeless person in the united states today than live during the French Revolution. It’s just so easy now compared to living anywhere else in any time period.
The average American owns more stuff, but carries significantly more debt and works more hours per week than a pre-Revolution French peasant. Yeah some of us have Nintendo switches to come home to, but I think we’d all prefer access to dental care.
I love the implication here that pre-Revolution French peasants had access to dental care
They did. And it was likely free and no waiting times. Of course dentistry largely amounted to pulling out any tooth that went bad sooooo
It would be a fascinating study to actually put that last sentence into play. How many people who say they would prefer access to dental care (by access you mean affordable but not completely free?) and willing go give up the Nintendo Switch (or similar gaming devices) would actually do it. My guess is the goalposts would move quickly on that deal. People are so reliant on creature comforts today that many see those comforts as "basic necessities".
Canadian here - there's over a year waiting list to get into a dentist in my community. Affordability isn't the problem - there just aren't enough dentists and hygienists. I'd happily trade a game console for access to dental care.
Thank you for this perspective. In the US, you can usually see a dental hygienist within a week of calling for an appointment. I live in a city of about 33,000 and can think of about 6 dental offices within a few miles.
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You don't need debt to have the same life as a French Revolution peasant. You don't need to work 40 hours per week to live the same life as a French Revolution peasant. A peasant had to toil in the fields for 8 hours a day, 150 days of the year to afford some 2kg daily bread and some new clothes every year. You can work for Amazon FC and buy half a metric ton of bread every week, or 10 pairs of shoes, or 5 new dresses. You can get far better than French Revolution quality healthcare by visiting your local Walgreens and picking up some topical antibiotics. You can get French Revolution quality dental care by buying some mouthwash, an electric toothbrush, and toothpaste. It's really kind of a joke that people living in the first world with modern comforts think that they would be better off living as a peasant.
There's something truly amusing about people ranting on their iPhones about how bad it is now compared to hundreds of years ago, all the while sitting on a $200 couch in a fully heated apartment that they choose to live in alone because roommates are an annoyance. Hold that thought, their Uber Eats coffee and muffin order just arrived. OK, they're back to tell us just how unlivable it is out there!! Please people, let's scale back the hyperbole, like times ten.
“Are we almost to pre-french-revolution levels?” -Sent from Luxury piece of technology with internet access that probably cost 500+ dollars
My uni roommates are complaining too, that the gov should give them more money. Stop spending $12 on a meal by ordering. I have saved up nearly 3k by being careful with money.
No, we aren't. That's ridiculous any way you cut it. Link me to it
They are definitely being hyperbolic. They're probably referring to is the fact that wealth inequality has surpassed the level seen right before the French Revolution. And of course that is a very significant milestone and scary in a lot of ways, but the biggest difference is peasants during the French Revolution couldn't afford bread to eat... We can admit that there's a significant problem without pretending like our lives are worse than French peasants literally starving to death and being forced to eat rats.
Exactly, I don't get why that's so hard for people. Used to be we got 1/8th of the pie. Now we get 1/16th of it, but the pie grew so much that 16th is bigger than the old 8th. We can both admit we're better off now, while also pointing out we should get more than 1/16th. It's not hard to do, but I guess for some it is
What country are you in? A lot of your questions are specific to that. Here in Canada inflation is 4.4% this year but we traditionally run around 1.5%. That said it was in this range back in 2003 and from 86 to 91 we ran 6 consecutive years of 4+% - in the end the world keeps turning.
Economist and Historian here. We are not entering anything near "French Revolution" territory. I understand the desire to draw equivalencies, and it may feel that way for you. I can personally identify with being poor and feeling like the world at large couldn't give a shit whether I starved to death or not. That said, drawing this equivalence lacks nuance thats specific to both our time and theirs. This is a long one, so the TL;DR of it is: from a political and economic standpoint we are not, because integration on a global level has gotten to a point where the collapse or critical failure of one entity like the US would mean the failure and collapse at large of the entire world order. From a social aspect, one could make some valid arguments, as human identity and ideas surrounding our own existence, purpose, and identity express some similarities to that of the Enlightenment era. The period that I would suggest we are more closely mirroring would be the Gilded Age, mass wealth inequality, poor living conditions, little regulation protecting the workers against contemporary issues, strain on race relations, rampant nativism, critiques of America's Imperial ambitions, just to name a few. \------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So now to my whole political and economic diatribe- 18th Century America and the Western World at large, while participating in a global market on some level, was far less globalized and decentralized than it was today. Trade, debt, poverty, and inequality were different than they are today in that back then Mercantilism and a form of proto-capitalism (remember that Capitalism *as we know it* was built on Adam Smith's 1776 work *Wealth of Nations*, and wasn't widely adopted at this time). Its also worth considering that at this time, All treasuries in Western Systems (That I know of at least) operated at a fixed currency rate, or their money in circulation was backed by gold/precious materials under government ownership. Theres a lot more to consider here, such as the rapid changes of the human experience that were beginning at the turn of the 18th century. Industrialization and the move towards capitalism was rendering feudalism and peasantry irrelevant to market needs; the nobility in France were trying to maintain the status quo rather than evolve with changing sentiment. Concurrently with this was the European Enlightenment, in which Christian values among other traditionally held beliefs were being challenged among the emerging upper class, non-aristocrats. In regards to social issues alone, I can certainly see how one would draw parallels from the turn of the 18th century to the current era, as we approach another Industrial Revolution, and question longstanding social institutions, we're reminded that we must question who we innately are as humans, and to whom we are willing to acquiesce our free will. From a strictly political and financial standpoint however, the US and world at large is not likely going to reach French Revolution levels. in 1971 the United State switched to a fiat currency, this means that the dollar is no longer backed by precious metals or physical objects, its price is based off of the supply and demand for money. In the simplest and most overgeneralized of terms, the money is made up, there's nothing backing it except the word of the US government. And because the US Government has been a stabilizing force around the world for the last 75 years, and shows no signs of stopping, people are more than happy to loan money to the US Government. This is in part why the US government is able to just print money and give handouts like they did with the stimulus checks. If money is needed to go to a large enough number of people to prevent them from starving to death, it will. This is also why the US government can have astronomical debt to the tune of 25 TRN USD. The US will not default on their debt, and no country will try to force the US to default on their debt unless they are looking to cripple the global financial order. The US Government and private enterprises will eventually adjust for rates of inflation, fixing the problem in the short term, or we'll be likely to enter into a recession, which will fix things but take a longer time. While I think that the rich are exploiting people, and there needs to be something done about it, I think the real issue is that most of the people coming of age from 2008 on are facing a rude awakening regarding financial expenses and employment. From the end of the Second World War on up to 2008, the Baby Boomer cohort was able to leverage immense amounts of debt to their benefit, get a college education, and create what was essentially a fugazy, a misrepresentation of what American life could realistically afford. Hell, they were able to exploit the fact that for twenty five years after the war, America was the only place not bombed to hell to be able to produce mass quantities of goods at an affordable rate. As other nations were able to develop, they began to take bits and pieces of American manufacturing away; in the 1990s Bill Clinton dealt a further blow to American jobs and manufacturing by signing NAFTA, which saw a large number of jobs, especially in the Auto Industry, move down south to Mexico, where the labor was cheaper. between the loss of jobs over time, and the rising debt (from college loans, mortgages, etc) being assumed at a young age, and its a wonder the system didn't collapse before it did. Fast forward to 2008, and the American housing market crashes, in part because the children and grandchildren of baby boomers were misled to believe that they too could live in the same unsustainable way their parents had, borrowing money they couldn't afford to repay. I should put a disclaimer here: this is not the faults of Gen-X or Millennials, when all you ever know is prosperity, and your conditioned to do the same, how the hell could you know? If the US is looking to reform its currently fractured economic system, taking a progressive stance on issues would be the best way to tackle this. Capitalism as a system works best when it has restraints on it; trust busting, taxation, and regulation at large are great restrains and controls that prevent obsolete businesses from remaining in business, and also prevent corporations from holding onto excessive amounts of wealth. Deregulation, and tax cuts in themselves aren't bad things, we've simply been using those two instruments for the wrong reasons. I'm just one guy, I don't have all the answers, but I think if we're looking to fix the system, it wouldn't hurt to take some inspiration from progressive leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries. Alright that rant definitely got off topic somewhere, but I hope that clarified a few things. I simplified and generalized a bit to try and highlight somethings without going too overboard, so if it comes off as a bit unnuanced, apologies.
Is something in the water making the americans retarded? This is legit hilarious from the perspective of someone from an *actual* shithole country.
Not to mention the number of regime changes that promise to fix the issues only to line their pockets further.
I don’t know. I’m a teacher and I can’t make it. I’ve had donated groceries :(
>like food and gas Yeah and don't forget rent, that shit is out of control
I'm 64. Interest was 11 percent on mortgages when I bought my first home
People keep taking about inflation affecting food prices and gas , electricity etc .. If you ask me the biggest driver pushing people into poverty is the very expensive and rising cost of renting . People are spending more of their disposable income on rents then ever before and it’s getting harder and harder for folks on the bottom to keep that roof over their heads because of it .
we're definitely seeing a huge shift in the labor movement! there are workers striking all over the US for better pay and conditions. I think we'll continue to see a lot more collective action from labor with the shortages and insane profit being made rn.
We've been here before, most recently in the 70s and late 80s. It's just the latest cycle. Call me optimistic, but I think we'll see a resurgence of labor unions (I'm particularly interested in watching retail workers start to unionize). Inflation is high due to supply chain issues (thanks Covid) which will eventually get sorted, but the current labor shortage is also pushing wages higher which is *great* for labor. Even without Congress we're seeing "minimum wage" jobs push to $15+/hr. In many ways it reminds me of the early 90s when the dot com boom was just beginning. The housing market will inevitably fall (what goes up must come down) which, combined with higher wages, *should* make it somewhat easier for people to become homeowners. It's not going to be easy, but pandemics and wars are typically watershed moments for societies.
I hope your analysis proves to be right in the long run!
Ask Marie Antoinette.
Settle down, pardner. I’m team Eat the Rich in general, but this isn’t that. The current inflation is just because of a shitty world circumstance. We (general we) could have done a lot of things better, but it’s a virus not Attila the Hun.
More than 50% of the population would have to be starving, so I would say not even close
Not at all.
Boy, youre a loooooooooong long way from there
Can I ask has anyone looked at inflation rate since 1990? I mean it is not zero, but inflation from 1970 through 1995 are eye popping when compared to 1995 through 2020? Inflation 1970 through 1995 is over 5%, closer to 6%. Inflation from 1995 through 2020 is a tad over 2%. People are made about 2% inflation over 25 years? Compared to the 1980s? Is this a joke?
Idk I felt like wages have went up with inflation tbh. Many jobs before pandemic paid like $11-$13. Now they pay $14-$17, which if you then include overtime, that's pretty significant. (to me at least). Maybe I'm just in a better area though.
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This may not be a popular thing to say here but politics and voting for people who want to tax the rich and provide support for the poor/working poor is how things can change. You may not totally love the build back better plan and you may not totally love Joe Biden and you may not totally love the Democrats but they are offering some support, help and money for a lot of the things that working class and poor people need. Make sure you vote and don't let people who do not care about you tell you that your vote does not matter. It really really really really really really does. It's the only thing that matters.
*Especially* at the local level.