Course, the thing is in America there is in many ways no true proletariate. It isn't the same. Pay cut after firing after pay cut after saying "take any job, any job" after firing--all that--just means they don't have children. It's not like in other places or eras where capitalistic oppression would bring forth great numbers of workerlings.

That’s not “not having a proletariat”. The proletariat is a state of being.

It’s a (wilfully and very successfully engineered) absence of class consciousness.

Perhaps the word missing here is “precariat”?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat

I like that word because it illustrates America better. You're always on the edge of multiple cliffs:

the deportation cliff;

the prison cliff;

the insurance doesn't pay the doctor the half million they extort cliff;

the no financial aid cliff;

the debt cliffs (more like a mountain range unto themselves);

the you're fired or unemployment on your resume or bad resume cliff;

the addiction cliff;

the fertility (especially for women) cliff;

the sickly child cliff;

the disability cliff;

the homelessness or lose your house or get evicted[1] cliff;

And my personal favorite: the lobotomy cliff. It's the beautiflest as seen from below!

There's others I'm sure. Lots of cliffs to go around! Everybody gets lots of cliffs! No parachutes though, but if you're looking for a good time you can ride a motorcycle off them!

[1] So this one is...it's weird. I talked to a homeless kid (over 18 yeah but still a kid) and asked him, "so what do I do if I end up on the street? What strategies..."

"Just don't end up on the street."

"But if I DO end up on the street then what I do is I..."

"No. The street is cruel. You wake up with people spitting on you, or pissing on you, depends on the night. You for one, you specifically would get gutted and murdered by the guy you pissed off the other time who threatened to do just that. Just do whatever the FUCK you have to do WHATEVER ANYBODY ASKS to not end up homeless."

That's what I call a cliff.

> just means they don't have children

[citation needed]

This is a topic near and dear to me:

the problem:

2022: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/3fb2c64b/bi...

1. U.S. population growth has been slowing for years, and in 2021, the population grew only by 392,665—or 0.1%, which is the lowest rate since the nation’s founding. 2. The U.S. will be older and more diverse but also unable to meet the workforce demands of a dynamic and competitive economy.

one of a few sources:

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/12/no-kids-no-ca...

3. Of the 92.2 million adults ages 55 and older in 2018, 15.2 million (16.5%) are childless, defined here as having no biological children...childlessness is more common among the younger cohort of older adults. This suggests that childless adults will make up an even greater share of the older adult population in the future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/declining-birthrate-mo...

4. In more than two dozen interviews with young women in Phoenix and Denver, some said they felt they could not afford a baby.