Obama's Real Change: Destroying the Middle Class

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?hp&_r=0

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

The destruction of the middle class is the greatest hope for the statists, or as I like to call them the establishment. How can the affluent live their lives correctly when there are so many average people who can afford to be around them?

Originally posted by Eladar
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?hp&_r=0

[b]The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

The destruction of the middle class is the greatest hope for the statists, or as I like to call them the establishment. How can the affluent live their lives correctly when there are so many average people who can afford to be around them?[/b]

Read the Communist Manifesto. Marx didn't talk that much about the rich, but about the bourgeois (middle class). The war of the left is to eliminate the middle class leaving them as the rich, and the rest of us as the workers.

Originally posted by Eladar
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/upshot/the-american-middle-class-is-no-longer-the-worlds-richest.html?hp&_r=0

[b]The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

The destruction of the middle class is the greatest hope for the statists, or as I like to call them the establishment. How can the affluent live their lives correctly when there are so many average people who can afford to be around them?[/b]

From the article:

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

Clearly, the "statists" running America need to embrace the laissez faire policies of Canada and Europe...............

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
From the article:

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

Clearly, the "statists" running America need to embrace the laissez faire policies of Canada and Europe...............

The US middle class was the one that needed to be taken down a notch or two, just like the US military.

Originally posted by normbenign
Read the Communist Manifesto. Marx didn't talk that much about the rich, but about the bourgeois (middle class). The war of the left is to eliminate the middle class leaving them as the rich, and the rest of us as the workers.

Just rubbish and hardly worth responding to. Why not google some of this before making a complete fool of yourself?

According to Karl Marx the bourgeoisie were the capitalists. They were the people who owned the land, and the factories as well as the machines.

http://uk.ask.com/question/according-to-karl-marx-who-made-up-the-bourgeoisie

How can you make any serious comment whatever about Marx when you have not reached the very simplest level of comprehension of what he was saying?

Originally posted by finnegan
Just rubbish and hardly worth responding to. Why not google some of this before making a complete fool of yourself?

According to Karl Marx the bourgeoisie were the capitalists. They were the people who owned the land, and the factories as well as the machines.

http://uk.ask.com/question/according-to-karl-marx-who-made-up-the-bourgeoisie

H ...[text shortened]... t Marx when you have not reached the very simplest level of comprehension of what he was saying?

I've read and understood every word of the English translation. If you read German, and can show me differences by all means.

Originally posted by normbenign
I've read and understood every word of the English translation. If you read German, and can show me differences by all means.

Great. Now you can explain to me how you conflate the middle class with the minority of wealthy people who own the means of production. It seem likely that what you mean by the middle class differs from what I do.

Originally posted by finnegan
Great. Now you can explain to me how you conflate the middle class with the minority of wealthy people who own the means of production. It seem likely that what you mean by the middle class differs from what I do.

Why not splain why the middle class continues to tank under Obama and actually try to give him at least a small bit of accountability.

Otherwise, I am to assume he is a powerless and ineffective leader.

Originally posted by normbenign
I've read and understood every word of the English translation. If you read German, and can show me differences by all means.

That is an ambitious claim for you to make. I would not dare to say the same of myself, knowing something of the scale of Marx's writing and the degree to which one source has to be cross checked against others, because Marx never actually did resolve his account of class, using the concept in diverse ways. The only place where he attempted a systematic analysis of class was in Volume Three of Capital, where he identified three classes in capitalist society - wage earners, capitalists and landowners. But then, as you clearly know having read and understood every word of it, he died and this volume was never completed. So we have to root around other sources to clarify the matter. However, as you refer to the Communist Manifesto, here is the relevant section and a link to the full text:

The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master(3) and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Which of these two great hostile camps is the middle class? (There is a clue in the question)

Originally posted by whodey
Why not splain why the middle class continues to tank under Obama and actually try to give him at least a small bit of accountability.

Otherwise, I am to assume he is a powerless and ineffective leader.

Why do you confuse me for a supporter of Obama's militarist, imperialist and neo-liberal agenda?

I agree that in Anglo Saxon economies including the US the middle classes are under attack. They have been consistently since perhaps the Seventies. I do not agree that this is anything specific to the current administration in the US or in the UK. They are continuing established patterns.

....The middle class is not really a feature of the middle 19th Century economy in the way it became in the 20th. Marx did predict its emergence, in Capital Vol 3, because he argued that as business increases in size, it would become necessary for the owners to employ an intermediate class of worker to perform non manual, administrative, supervisory and managerial roles. But he saw these as wage earners nonetheless and predicted they would in time be absorbed into the proletariat.

Another version of middle class which he discussed was the petty (petite) bourgeoisie, who were self employed or owned small businesses. He predicted this category would be unable to compete with larger rivals and would also be absorbed over time into the proletariat. That, of course, is arguably happening. In the UK for example, independent book sellers are more or less totally destroyed by unfair competition from Amazon, independent music shops were destroyed by unfair competition from Play.com and so on.

It would be impossible to have a sensible discussion about the history of the middle class by relying on Marx. I do not advocate trying it. But I am responding to a ludicrous claim by Normbenign regarding Marx and I await with interest his reply. Marx was not attacking the middle class when he attacked the bourgeoisie because contrary to what Normbenign claimed, they are not at all the same thing. A middle class did not yet exist on a large scale. He was, rather, considering its implications and concluding that in time it would be unable to sustain its position between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and it would be crushed.

As people now debate the attacks on the middle class by those currently leading our neo-liberal economic agenda, including no doubt Obama, it is useful to at least be aware that this was what Marx predicted would take place.

Another version of middle class which he discussed was the petty (petite) bourgeoisie, who were self employed or owned small businesses. He predicted this category would be unable to compete with larger rivals and would also be absorbed over time into the proletariat. That, of course, is arguably happening.

You mean he predicted a part of the economic cycle? Boom and bust is the natural order of things. Eventually big monopolies will fall due to corruption and we experience economic downturns. Once we hit bottom small businesses create wealth and foundation for growth which eventually corrupted and leads to economic downturns.

Rinse and repeat. Of course today the corrupt people have turned to the government to extend the time that they can suck money, but eventually even the government's money will run out and there will be a huge economic downturn.

Originally posted by Eladar

You mean he predicted a part of the econo eventually even the government's money will run out and there will be a huge economic downturn.

Entirely incidental and beside the point to the discussion. Your head as always seems to be on auto pilot with a push button response not mediated by much in the way of thought. I am responding to an earlier post by describing what - if anything - Marx actually had to say about the middle class. Whether he was right or wrong or interesting or tedious or helpful or not is incidental to the matter which is - what did he say.

Originally posted by finnegan
Entirely incidental and beside the point to the discussion. Your head as always seems to be on auto pilot with a push button response not mediated by much in the way of thought. I am responding to an earlier post by describing what - if anything - Marx actually had to say about the middle class. Whether he was right or wrong or interesting or tedious or helpful or not is incidental to the matter which is - what did he say.

I was just responding to what Marx had to say. It is total trash and anyone actually thinks it is relevant to reality, that person is delusional and if in a position of power dangerous.

Originally posted by Eladar
I was just responding to what Marx had to say. It is total trash and anyone actually thinks it is relevant to reality, that person is delusional and if in a position of power dangerous.

A considered position of course. Thank you for sharing.