Who is Working Class - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14933299
SolarCross wrote:Also how is an interest bearing pension or savings not rentier income? Or indeed state welfare benefits? What about someone who rented out the house they owned but just used the rental income to pay the rent on another place where they lived because for personal circumstances they didn't live in the same place that they owned?


I'm specifically referring to rentier class bourgeoisie. A welfare recipient or retiree may subsist comfortably (or not so comfortably) but that's all they can do. A rentier of the elite class is capable of multiplying his capital through leveraging other people's money via mechanisms established for this purpose in capital markets. He is capable of purchasing labor and capital. He is capable of monopolizing vast tracts of land to the exclusion of all others (this is why the right hates public lands so much - they can't grab it). He is capable of purchasing legislators to enact laws that augment the advantages he enjoys.

There's a gray area to be sure. But the typical small business owner typically dies and leaves his business to a few squabbling children, after which it typically disappears in a few years; just because he owns a business doesn't make him any different than a professional or a laborer. They subsist at different levels of wealth, but their assets rarely reach the critical level where their wealth 'takes off' and becomes self-reproducing.
#14933358
quetzalcoatl wrote:I'm specifically referring to rentier class bourgeoisie. A welfare recipient or retiree may subsist comfortably (or not so comfortably) but that's all they can do. A rentier of the elite class is capable of multiplying his capital through leveraging other people's money via mechanisms established for this purpose in capital markets. He is capable of purchasing labor and capital. He is capable of monopolizing vast tracts of land to the exclusion of all others (this is why the right hates public lands so much - they can't grab it). He is capable of purchasing legislators to enact laws that augment the advantages he enjoys.

There's a gray area to be sure. But the typical small business owner typically dies and leaves his business to a few squabbling children, after which it typically disappears in a few years; just because he owns a business doesn't make him any different than a professional or a laborer. They subsist at different levels of wealth, but their assets rarely reach the critical level where their wealth 'takes off' and becomes self-reproducing.


Multiplying wealth is something anyone can do though, just consume less than you make and wisely re-invest the surplus, investing in skills and qualifications is a prime example of that. The "critical level" is a lot lower and more reachable than you make out, it's only that lots of people just re-invest enough to make themselves quite comfortable and then consume the rest rather than aiming for the stratosphere.

If you want to make a new class system based on a binary of rentier vs a new kind of workingclass who is completely incapable of multiplying his wealth then your "rentier" class will include some 90+% of population and workingclass will be just be floor sweepers with deep learning difficulties or psychological issues like alcoholism or some such.

A lot of you middle class people here are trying to paint yourselves as "working class" while packing a tertiary education, your own home, a fat private pension and a well paid professional career. It's a joke.
#14933396
quetzalcoatl wrote:If you are able to live on rentier income, you are not part of the working class. Rentier income is the rent from land or money. This is not the same as being self-employed, being a professional, or retired living off pension/savings. It means you own enough capital to increase your ownership of capital through purely financial (passive) means, even if you do "work."

If this description doesn't apply to you, you are working class.


Then the jump from working class to non-working class is pretty flimsy, at least in the U.S. It would be easy for the average American worker to end up renting out portions of his own property and finance a couple of others for renting to end up quitting his day job.

Then again, this seems odd too, as a landlord in America is usually indistinguishable from a full-time contractor, as he spends most of his time working on his properties to keep them up to code or ready for the next tenant.

Working class is a marxian notion that was appropriated by the Brits.

the American working class are people in the middle and low income brackets that also work in blue collar trades. Most people in the working class would struggle to include dishwashers in their same class for instance, so it seems to be a combination of factors.

But generally, it seems that the nature of their work and their relative income is how "working class" is defined in the States. In the UK it seems have more to do with notions stemming from the heirarchal social order, thus for english the working class usually refers to a generally landless renters who have to works jobs for employers in order to survive.

The American notion is simultaneously narrower and more broad than this (narrower in regards to actual trade, and broader in regards to being defined by income), and is also far less depressing.
#14933403
@quetzalcoatl
When I lived in Cambridge, I knew a woman who received a 4 bedroom house rent free from the government and sizable welfare payments because she had 4 out of wedlock children to unknown fathers. She bundled all four of her children into one room, kept one room for herself and let out the two remaining rooms to students at the university. She spent virtually all her time down the pub leaving her children to fend for themselves. From her dress, manners, tastes, habits and education no one would mistake her for a bourgeoisie, indeed a marxian would snootily class her as a lumpenprole not even as high as a proletariat, an american would call her trailer trash, yet as it happens her significant income was 100% rentier though admittedly she spent all of it on feeding her alcoholism.
#14933462
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Working class is a marxian notion that was appropriated by the Brits.

The reverse is true. The term "working class" as a noun can be traced back to the 18th century, this is quite a bit before the marxoids started their little game. The concept though is as old as time. I have read some viking age mythology and there is one myth which clearly presents viking society as having three classes: 1. labourers (aka working class / peasants), 2. Merchants and artisans (aka bourgeoisie) 3. Rulers and Warriors (aka nobility). Interestingly they didn't conceive of priests as having a distinct class of their own as medieval Christians did.

As a rule marxoids don't innovate instead they plagiarise, distort and pervert. Intellectually speaking they are just parasites.
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#14934422
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Then the jump from working class to non-working class is pretty flimsy, at least in the U.S. It would be easy for the average American worker to end up renting out portions of his own property and finance a couple of others for renting to end up quitting his day job.

Then again, this seems odd too, as a landlord in America is usually indistinguishable from a full-time contractor, as he spends most of his time working on his properties to keep them up to code or ready for the next tenant.

Working class is a marxian notion that was appropriated by the Brits.

the American working class are people in the middle and low income brackets that also work in blue collar trades. Most people in the working class would struggle to include dishwashers in their same class for instance, so it seems to be a combination of factors.

But generally, it seems that the nature of their work and their relative income is how "working class" is defined in the States. In the UK it seems have more to do with notions stemming from the heirarchal social order, thus for english the working class usually refers to a generally landless renters who have to works jobs for employers in order to survive.

The American notion is simultaneously narrower and more broad than this (narrower in regards to actual trade, and broader in regards to being defined by income), and is also far less depressing.



I think that you are trying to say that there is a difference between 'earned' income & 'unearned' income.

Being a 'rentier' in UK English would be regarded as the person or business classed as a 'landlord', ie, the beneficial 'owner'
whose property's are 'Let' for rent to the 'renter'.

In the UK, the incomes of renters tend to be average, but any notions of being able to aspire to home ownership are pretty remote.
This is because the political establishment operate a 'laissez faire' policy that allows rentiers to raise rents to an artificial 'market value'.
As such, it keeps families who are renting, even though their wages are quite reasonable, after paying such high rents, along with income\spending taxes, they end up as poor as any benefit claimant.
'Buy-to-Let' landlords are buying property, subsidised by the general taxpayers through the Housing Benefit system that those families have to claim arising from high rents that means their disposable income has to be topped up by claiming Housing Benefit.

The beneficiaries are of course the Landlords whom the TORY Party favour, so they have no interest in changing that system for fear of losing the patronage of the landlords, even though it is completely illogical, because, for every landlord that the TORIES favour, there are many potential tenants that would vote differently.

The 'problem' with the UK Welfare State system is that the poorer members of society are politically bound to a political party(Labour)that has, since the last war, more so since 1979, paid them 'Benefits' to top up their incomes according to their circumstances , but which, since CAMERON won power, has broken the 'social contract', by bringing in 'Welfare Reforms', AKA, 'AUSTERITY', that has cut these people's incomes in REAL TERMS, by limiting increases due to inflation & allowing prices to accelerate at the same time.
Additionally, they altered the methodology of measuring inflation, to create even more poverty.

Where 'LABOUR' went wrong, is they paid 'BENEFITS' out of taxation of those in work, rather than making EMPLOYERS pay a REAL 'Living Wage'.
That alone would mean that the alternative political party attempting to gain power through it's political prejudices, could NOT capitalise on cutting benefits at the polls, by appealing to voters who were reactionary 'Tories'.

The subject of 'CLASS', can be seen to be propagated politically, NOT economically, IF a proper INCOMES policy is enforced nationally in the economy.
The 'LABOUR' Party is equally guilty of creating social-economic DIVISIONS, as the TORIES are.

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