People think this because it's true. The median U.S. income is no longer enough to cover a year of basic expenses, or achieve reasonable goals, even if you work for the entire year[1].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/24/this-char...

Free-market extremists provably ruined more lives than all terrorists combined

They've infected both sides of politics, reducing most elections to 'red neoliberal' or 'blue neoliberal' that decide nothing except whose gross neoliberal friends get to gouge the taxpayers this term.

This is backed by major media companies who are also all run by neoliberals. They put on a bit of theatre to pretend there is actually more than trivial differences and they'll rake in billions.

They teach their kids neoliberalism in their exclusive schools, training them up to be the next generation of greedy sociopaths. They pay sleazy neoliberal P.R companies to undermine their critics online. They take over unions and turn them into yet another avenue for personal profit.

All to the thunderous applause of the neoliberals running incredibly exploitative, near-sighted businesses that are rapidly ruining the world in search of ever greater profits.

People need to start identifying this ideology and stripping the people who spout it from power.

Money doesn't trickle down, no matter how much of it you stuff into a billionaires pocket. The 'free market' doesn't give people the power to end things like foreign-slavery.

The powerful people that push these ideas know it. The rest of us need to know it too.

So did architects who designed unsafe staircases...

Or air pollution...

Or mosquitoes...

However most of the malaria deaths occur in people returning from countries where the toll is much higher.

The industries where the government stimulates demand (everything from mortgage rate deductions to section 8 and from creating and backing loans non-dischargable in bankruptcy to well, pretty much everything in healthcare) and restricts supply (everything from zoning and environmental regulation to excessive regulation, like in healthcare, to directly running things), are expensive, as summarized crudely in this famous chart [1].

In fact, we are now experiencing what happens when government restricts supply and stimulates demand on most things - lockdowns + stimulus (in some cases, also things like tariffs, canceling pipelines, etc.). It evidently "works" exactly the same way as e.g. healthcare "worked" for a long time; on a smaller scale due to relative size of the interference vs the interfered-with segment of the economy.

Oh and of course, price to income ratio in the USA still remains in line with OECD averages, and considerably lower than some far less "neoliberal" countries [2]

In general, size of the middle class in the free market hellscape is far larger, and the incomes are higher [3] Moreover, the "hollowing out" of the middle class is due to the migration primarily to higher income brackets in constant dollars [4]

What really is happening in the segments where things are not going as well as they could, is not neoliberalism.

The 1st part was described by Ortega Y Gasset almost a century ago; he describes one aspect of "mass men" as being similar to spoiled children (or aristocratic heirs), who are born into the world of prosperity built by someone else, and so take it for granted and assume they are entitled to it. It's hard for me to believe that about 1920ies, but I guess I haven't lived then and he has; it's easy for me to believe that about the West in the 2020ies.

The second part was described e.g. by Thomas Sowell a decade ago - politicians force corporations to give people things. Whatever benefit the people get from that is ascribed to politicians. The negative outcomes (at the very least, someone has to pay for the benefits) is blamed on the corporation. There's historically been a name for this model of governance [5], and it flourished in 1920ies, which might not be a coincidence.

[1] https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019....

[2] https://data.oecd.org/chart/6xsL

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-...

[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/12/09/the-ame...

[5] https://www.ocregister.com/2012/06/12/thomas-sowell-obamas-n...

No, it didn't.

If you are salary-dependent, you are working class.

A slightly higher than non-Hispanic white median salary used to mean you were in a relatively comfortable, but still wage-labor-dependent, segment of the working class. Women entering the work force in mass and some other changes, it takes a slightly higher multiple of a single non-Hispanic White median income (but a fairly similar multiple of a non-Hispanic White household income) to do that for a household, and its been that way for most of the working life of Gen X and later.

No, the people trying to prevent working-class solidarity that sold the idea that a vague upper-income segment of the proletariat with no clear or coherent definition, and none of the type of differentiation in fundamental relation to the economy that defines an economic class, are the “middle class” in capitalism rather than the classical definition in which that is the petit bourgeoisie were the redefiners.

If you want to redefine middle class to be small business owners and merchants that don’t depend on a salary that’s fine I guess, but that’ll be an even smaller percentage of the population than the modern middle class.

And remain so, yes.

> Most people were peasants.

No, most people were working class. And remain so.

> Is that what you’d prefer society to be like?

No, that's what capitalism is like. Redefining the upper income class as “middle class” is an effort to preserve capitalism by dividing the working class against itself, which I oppose because I’d prefer society not be like that.

But, more: I'm a "worker". I work for other people. I also make a borderline-top-10% income. I make more than many small business owners. So I'm not middle class, because I have a job? Class is about how I get the money, not how much money I get?

And in your last paragraph, you talk about "the upper income class". Is there one class hierarchy that is based on income, and another that is based on source of income? If so, why should I have solidarity with my income-source group rather than with my income-level group? And if not, then what are you trying to say in your last paragraph?

It's a historical use still common in some contexts. I agree that being clear on the definitions being used is important, including marking explicitly where definitions may be different from what the reader is familiar. But it's not a definition dragonwriter has simply invented.

The Wikipedia page on middle class has more info.

In the USA, an alternative definition has become popular, where middle-class is like the middle section of a bell curve.

> It’s the same people who go spend too much at casinos

YMMV but my experience is actually the opposite. I.e. rather the gambling types actually buy derivates and everybody else considers buying crypto or has already done so.

For now it isn't, because it has been going up and to the right for quite some time. But the music can stop at some point...

Even those in tech believe we don't have any meaningful opportunities. Real talk: most of what we do day in day out for our employers is shit built upon bullshit built upon a house of cards, and it will come crashing down sooner than later. The European Union is finally flexing its muscles, other countries are beginning to follow suit against the digital corporations, even the US Congress is asking questions from both parties now. And where will we all be when the venture capital dries up, when entire business models are outright banned or made virtually impossible because of privacy regulations? Or when those we work for (especially in the automotive or other carbon-sensitive industries) have to cut down costs or close shop?

If you work at Facebook or Google (and to a lesser extent Microsoft and Apple), everything you do follows exactly one motive: make as much profit for the shareholders as possible by advertising people stuff they don't need. Most of what everyone else is doing is either directly related to advertising, to creating a new product that is only marginally better than the previous version or to extracting money out of someone else for services they don't need.

Bullshit jobs? We are in a bullshit economy, and the circle of capitalism forces us to ever-increasing economic growth - it's obvious that the path we are on as a species is pointing straight to our downfall, be it by climate change, by a resource-resetting war or by exhaustion of vital natural resources.

Disagree? Ask yourself when was the last time you created something at work that provides a net benefit to society's survival.

I think you have a point, but at the same time I’m not sure it’s possible for everybody or even most people to have jobs that are crucial to society. Once you hit certain technology level and population thresholds, a lot of jobs become all about optimization and margins — even those that have more of a concrete role in society. It’s unavoidable unless we drop back to pre-1900s technology and/or population levels.

No. What we need to do is to not define our worth as humans by the work we do. Only then we can truly automate our crucial needs (i.e. food production, transportation) as far as possible without fearing massive social unrest by millions of people "without employment". A single train conductor replaces a hundred truck drivers. Many governmental services could be done by the citizens themselves based on automated processes. Most teachers (especially the ones who spend all their day droning in front of a blackboard) could be replaced by videos.

The only thing where we will definitely need humans in the future is research, care work and construction/trades. Everything else? Look at the Star Trek economy.

In the US, the question of what I did for a living was one of the first questions in any conversation, as if my answer was who I was and defined my worth in their eyes. I don’t miss it.

It would require both political will and lack of obstruction from large employers and entities invested in residential real estate however, and I don’t see that happening in the US for the foreseeable future short of a near-total turnover of the current elected body of politicians, rooting out any who would rather be in the pockets of lobbyists than represent the people.

This seems to be a common feature of world history: major changes in social systems only happen after widespread warfare destroys everything, and eventually people get sick of the death and destruction, vowing "never again" for approximately the next 80 years.

They still struggle with various social pathologies - alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, religious extremism.

I think some people cannot handle a life that is too easy. Arguably, even modern Westerners from richer backgrounds tend to plunge into surrogate struggles or take up very distant causes.

The domestic violence / religious extremism is a result of the Western nations favoring radical Islam interpretations as a base for the regimes they bought their oil from. A kingdom/dictatorship where the ruling class has their assets (i.e. their oil money) in Western nations is more stable for oil supply than a democracy.

VC capital will have to go somewhere. You seem to be arguing against ad companies, which I understand. But there are so many other tech avenues that produce tons of value. Healthcare, logistics, green energy, power distribution, retail, agriculture, security, etc. So many domains where tech can provide huge value and upside.

Though I work hard, I did get lucky. I am thankful and grateful.