The Working Class

[untilted]

this is great until you realise people want more out of their life than slave away in some office/store environment, doing it for short periods when all you have to look after is yourself is fine, but building a society around it is not.

i work in a profession where the "37-40 hours a week" aspect is considered a standing joke rather than the norm, if there's a need for the extra hours i will chip in because otherwise the entire company grinds to a screeching halt and i am FAR too proud of what i do to allow such a thing to happen, but i cannot and do not reasonably expect anybody else to behave like that and purposfully keep my working hours as close to the mandated maximum as reasonable because quite frankly, life is more than sitting in a office complex, and if it's not what would the bloody point be ? (that i then spend a inordinate amount of time fiddling in front of a monitor at home is another story, but that's my choice of leisure time)

Why should society (and by society I mean all of the rest of us who do work hard, through taxes) support someone because they dont want to work hard or feel they are too good for a minimum wage job, but are evidently not good enough to get a better job? Not wanting to work hard is not a reason to not have to work hard.

Financial services companies, and income tax for people who work for financial services companies, accounts for something insane like 1/3 of all tax income. In most financial services jobs, 50hr+ a week is normal. Essentially, people like me work our ass off so that other people can work less hard and be subsidised by us.

I support a welfare state. I believe in a strong, universal and reliable safety net (i'd improve our current system wrt disability benefits, health, dental etc), but I am so incredibly against subsidising people who are perfectly capable of working harder but choose not to because "lifes too short". That's essentially freeloading, and if everyone did it the welfare state would collapse into bankruptcy.

false dichotomy spotted.

saying "working 50+ hours a week at minimum wage to support a family IS NOT a model to base a society on" is not the same as saying "free candy for everyone!" ... one of the main points of almost every labour movement was (and still is) the notion that work HAS to pay off. more often than not tho' it seems like you're expected to get a shit pay and bad working conditions when you're doing important jobs like cleaning toilets, serving people or delivering mail/goods (yes, you read it right i used the term IMPORTANT).

but it seems only the "masters of the universe" are allowed to live a decent life - because they are "job creators". it's not like the accumulated wealth of the few is the surplus of the labour of many. and how dare the many to reclaim some of the results of their labour ...

welcome to consumerism mate.

a more patronizing person would point out that the bloke is more or less the victim of one of the greatest crimes perpetrated on the "common folk" in human history, but then we all are to some degree.

This attitude is what I hate most about the left wing. Its so incredibly patronising, so mind-blowingly condescending. "noone is responsible for their poor decisions, noone is to blame for their actions (or inactions) - its all society's fault, brainwashing them". Frankly complete and utter bullshit. People can, do and should escape situations like the one Frug described every day. The fact that his friend does not is his own fault, lack of willpower and poor character.

may i introduce you to a fellow called Kar Marx?
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."

on the one hand you got the notion that society progresses, that you WILL live a better life than your parents. that a capitalist society IS the best social order, because it will give you everything you'll need and even more - because if it won't, it will be at best the second best social order. (this also becomes important in the backdrop of social revolutions in the 20th century and the following clash of the systems between liberalism/capitalism and socialism/communism.)

beginning with consumerism almost at the same time (1930s onwards) a new paradigm established itself - that progress can be quantified in the number of electronic consumer products in your house (technology is *always* a nice and dandy way to evaluate progress .. you just have to compare specifications of some machines, not think about such complex and boring things like "society", "equality", "justice", "freedom to/from" etc.) ... afterall it's quite easy to sell stuff before it breaks, when you can establish a notion of "technological avantgarde".

not living up to that idea of a progress in living standard, would mean that you failed all the ideas that your parents held dear ("go to school, learn something, start working, live a better life than we did"), it would mean that you failed yourself ("everyone told me i can be anything if i just tried hard enough .. but i can't be everything"), it would mean that you failed the narrative of a liberal/capitalist society we live in ("work hard enough and you will receive what is due")

sure, there are different strategies available to cope with this discrepancy (or better: contradiction) between expectations (held by you, by your parents, by society) and the reality ... you can embrace these expectations by transcendending them in some sort of protestantic work ethic, you can embrace it in a profane way by living up to the standards of consumerism no matter the costs ...

[Liare]

this is great until you realise people want more out of their life than slave away in some office/store environment, doing it for short periods when all you have to look after is yourself is fine, but building a society around it is not.

i work in a profession where the "37-40 hours a week" aspect is considered a standing joke rather than the norm, if there's a need for the extra hours i will chip in because otherwise the entire company grinds to a screeching halt and i am FAR too proud of what i do to allow such a thing to happen, but i cannot and do not reasonably expect anybody else to behave like that and purposfully keep my working hours as close to the mandated maximum as reasonable because quite frankly, life is more than sitting in a office complex, and if it's not what would the bloody point be ? (that i then spend a inordinate amount of time fiddling in front of a monitor at home is another story, but that's my choice of leisure time)

Why should society (and by society I mean all of the rest of us who do work hard, through taxes) support someone because they dont want to work hard or feel they are too good for a minimum wage job, but are evidently not good enough to get a better job? Not wanting to work hard is not a reason to not have to work hard.

Financial services companies, and income tax for people who work for financial services companies, accounts for something insane like 1/3 of all tax income. In most financial services jobs, 50hr+ a week is normal. Essentially, people like me work our ass off so that other people can work less hard and be subsidised by us.

I support a welfare state. I believe in a strong, universal and reliable safety net (i'd improve our current system wrt disability benefits, health, dental etc), but I am so incredibly against subsidising people who are perfectly capable of working harder but choose not to because "lifes too short". That's essentially freeloading, and if everyone did it the welfare state would collapse into bankruptcy.

as untilted pointed out, false dichotomy here, but i assume you're dragging it into a extreme to make a point so let's address that.

why should society not support everybody Lallante ? why should people be forced to work a large part of their time at things many will heartily tell you they detest utterly ? is "for the greater good" really a acceptable cop-out in this context ? the typical response pulled to that is "because if we don't force people to work for a barely liveable wage things will collapse!", the irony is of course the people who say that wear suits and tie, drive BMW's and only have dim memories of making the ends meet as students, while having "mommy and dadddy" to pull on, but i am digressing here.

i love the fact you brought up the entirely pointless mirage that is the financial services companies, these things are today, marginally useful leeches on the actual economy that causes more destruction than anything else, while adding nothing of real actual value. why do i conclude that ?
try "pulling the cable" on the London Stock Exchange, what was destroyed by that ? did any bridges collapse ? did any factories close ? did anybody die ?

they have their place, but 1/3rd of the economy when it's more or less a unregulated casino consisting mostly of people scamming each other out of imaginary money with the occasional collateral damage of a few hundreds jobs lost here and there ?

don't tell me we cant do without much of that, it makes you look silly, if you want to look at the real actual reason for the "decline" and crisis we face today you need look no further than the increased Financialization of our societies, when shuffling numbers around is more "profitable" than building a factory and building stuff (automated or not) you're doing something very very wrong, it's just such a pity that the numbers shuffled are convertible into money and trough that tremendous influence.

given the right opportunities only a tiny segment of any one group of people make the "i dont want to work" choice, but when the "opportunity" offered is a small fraction above the "dole" then are you honestly going to tell people that say "no, i don't want to work for that" are somehow lazy bums ? and who's "fault" is it that people decline those positions ? the "dole" is normally adjusted to provide a fairly sparse, but acceptable life style (ie, you wont starve) so there's plenty of incentive to work, but if the employer's not willing to pay for the labour, why should they get it?

we have a group of employers here in Denmark who are offering employment below the dole and whining about people not taking it (no minimum wage here) and i cannot honestly bring myself to be annoyed at people declining to apply for those positions, i do greatly enjoy ridiculing those employers in comments when they get a journalist to write a story about it, if you're asking people to work 37 hours a week for a wage so low you can't afford to rent a room somewhere and have food on the table without overtime then you don't get to whine about people not working.

"fatcats" are invariably middle class in the traditional sense - i.e. they work, and work hard, for their money (hard in terms of hours at least).
True upper class is not working and not having to work - i.e. family money.

so people like Bill Gates qualified as "middle class" while he was still running microsoft up trough the 90's ?

"fat cat" is the point where you no longer need to work to maintain your living standard, what people then choose to do is up to them, i dont have a problem with the "fat cat" either, as long as he/she/it does not do a "Gina Rinehart" and start abusing the position. and yes, attempting to erode the wages and indirectly the living standards like that is nothing short of fucking disgusting, and qualifies as abuse in my book, "you got lucky by getting the right parents or made this brilliant invention that means you're now rolling in money ? good for you, just dont try to wreck the social framework the rest of us depend on, and pay your fucking taxes like everybody else." pretty much sums up my opinion on that.

Well you wont find many people defending Gina Rinehart or her disgusting views.

if only that was true, but it's not.
Gina Rinehart puts things on edge by going out and saying what she wants publicly, but try listening to the political rhetoric today, it's all about "we need to work more to compete" "we need to cut these social services to afford tax cuts" "things would be so much better without government intervention" "lets privatize this essential service so it becomes more efficient"

what kind of thinking do you think leads to things like the whole Atos circus ? do you think that's a one off ? or indeed unique to the UK ?

welcome to consumerism mate.

a more patronizing person would point out that the bloke is more or less the victim of one of the greatest crimes perpetrated on the "common folk" in human history, but then we all are to some degree.

This attitude is what I hate most about the left wing. Its so incredibly patronising, so mind-blowingly condescending. "noone is responsible for their poor decisions, noone is to blame for their actions (or inactions) - its all society's fault, brainwashing them". Frankly complete and utter bullshit. People can, do and should escape situations like the one Frug described every day. The fact that his friend does not is his own fault, lack of willpower and poor character.

and i detest the "you can bootstrap your way to becoming a billionaire if you just try hard enough!" narrative when it's patently not true, the exceptions prove the rule not the other way around.

for that narrative to have any chance of being true you'd need social equality and we don't have that, even the countries that get as close as you can reasonably get does not have it. (i should know, i live in one)

are people responsible for taking the "wrong education" when the councillor told them it was the right choice at the time ? are people responsible for not having the fortune of being born into a well functioning family ? are you honestly going to argue that it's "Johns fault his dad is a alcoholic and his mother hanged herself when he was 9, and he's a bit fucked up because of that" ?

you can't discount social inequality with a "well work harder, bum!" kind of argument.

as for the guy Frug described, he's disillusioned, the "promised narrative" obviously did not work out (the US is creating a entire generation of these people as we write here), i wager he's got a decent education but no opportunities to use it, combined with the "catching up with the joneses" complex, plenty of "cheap" loans and what have you, it's not surprising some people fall into that trap especially if they have no discipline when it comes to their personal finances. (it's surprisingly hard to deal with when you get to the point where you turn over the pennies to make the ends meet, and that's the only way to really learn it)

[Lallante]

This attitude is what I hate most about the left wing. Its so incredibly patronising, so mind-blowingly condescending. "noone is responsible for their poor decisions, noone is to blame for their actions (or inactions) - its all society's fault, brainwashing them". Frankly complete and utter bullshit. People can, do and should escape situations like the one Frug described every day. The fact that his friend does not is his own fault, lack of willpower and poor character.

and i detest the "you can bootstrap your way to becoming a billionaire if you just try hard enough!" narrative when it's patently not true, the exceptions prove the rule not the other way around.

Now who is using false dichotomies? I in no way believe that anyone can bootstap their way to become a billionaire, but I DO believe that anyone able bodied is capable of working a better-than-minimum wage job if they apply themselves and make the necessary changes in their life.

for that narrative to have any chance of being true you'd need social equality and we don't have that, even the countries that get as close as you can reasonably get does not have it. (i should know, i live in one)

How can we have social equality while some people are willing to work 50+ hours a week and others refuse to work 30? Surely getting an equal share OUT of society means you need to put equal effort IN?

are people responsible for taking the "wrong education" when the councillor told them it was the right choice at the time ? are people responsible for not having the fortune of being born into a well functioning family ? are you honestly going to argue that it's "Johns fault his dad is a alcoholic and his mother hanged herself when he was 9, and he's a bit fucked up because of that" ?

No, they are responsible for not retraining, not researching themselves and most of all for doing nothing about it when it becomes clear they have no prospects. "John" may not be at fault but "John" does not represent 90% of the people I'm talking about. Your arguement is the perfect analogy of saying "you can't criticise obese people because some of them are only obese because of pituitary gland medical conditions".

you can't discount social inequality with a "well work harder, bum!" kind of argument.

You can in specific instances where the main cause of someone's lack of social equity is their lack of engagement with gaining any.

as for the guy Frug described, he's disillusioned, the "promised narrative" obviously did not work out (the US is creating a entire generation of these people as we write here), i wager he's got a decent education but no opportunities to use it, combined with the "catching up with the joneses" complex, plenty of "cheap" loans and what have you, it's not surprising some people fall into that trap especially if they have no discipline when it comes to their personal finances. (it's surprisingly hard to deal with when you get to the point where you turn over the pennies to make the ends meet, and that's the only way to really learn it)

How do you know this? How do you know he isnt just lazy? How do you know he isnt just irresponsible for no good reason? Why is it more likely that his unproductiveness is due to some meta-ennui about the unequal state of society rather than simply because he cant give a fuck because his life is easy enough without having to?

[Liare]

Now who is using false dichotomies? I in no way believe that anyone can bootstap their way to become a billionaire, but I DO believe that anyone able bodied is capable of working a better-than-minimum wage job if they apply themselves and make the necessary changes in their life.

hey, you break em out, i break em out. fair is fair, no ?

your opinion is entirely reasonable on the surface, but for it to be true unemployment would have to be near 0%, and it's not, both the UK and Denmark is sitting uncomfortably at around 8% right now, there simply put is not enough employment to the people willing to take it, let alone suitable employment for what people have chosen to educate themselves as, unless you have a magic wand to wave that problem away, your position is going to be inherently unreasonable.

the job market here is anemic to at around 170000 people, with a average of 5000 jobs changing hands every month, that's new positions, and rehires, it's my understanding that the UK is looking at similar figures in terms of proportions, if a bit more dire.

How can we have social equality while some people are willing to work 50+ hours a week and others refuse to work 30? Surely getting an equal share OUT of society means you need to put equal effort IN?

social equality starts at a even footing at the first steps of life, not at your contributions to society. otherwise you are implying that a engineering graduate adds just as much value to society as a street sweeper, and that's patently untrue, well unless all he can get in terms of jobs is as a street sweeper. (only then, he's a net drain on society from the purely economic standpoint, but that's a different discussion all together)

No, they are responsible for not retraining, not researching themselves and most of all for doing nothing about it when it becomes clear they have no prospects. "John" may not be at fault but "John" does not represent 90% of the people I'm talking about. Your arguement is the perfect analogy of saying "you can't criticise obese people because some of them are only obese because of pituitary gland medical conditions".

so your answer to all the graduates that get dumped into a severely pressed job market with noticeably less jobs than applicants is "retain to something useful!" ?

i dont think you quite see the scale of the problems we face Lallante, when you got engineering students (ie. the hard stuff in university, with relatively low attraction but traditionally fairly high demand in the job market) graduating with top grades walking into months and months of unemployment being eventually being so lucky they manage to find a minimum wage job at a local Mcdonalds it's not just something you can "retrain away" or simply assign the blame to the people unfortunate enough to be unemployed and say "that's that!" its a real structural problem with the potential to blow up if/when the euro deigns to collapse.

even the "retrain to something useful!" argument is tenable at best, the IT sector that has consistently been growing for the last ten years is flooded with people that have decided to retrain in that direction, i know consulting companies numbering no more than 20 people total who are getting in excess of 100 unsolicited applications, on a weekly basis, while just having enough orders to make the ends meet without downsizing.

How do you know this? How do you know he isnt just lazy? How do you know he isnt just irresponsible for no good reason? Why is it more likely that his unproductiveness is due to some meta-ennui about the unequal state of society rather than simply because he cant give a fuck because his life is easy enough without having to?

i dont and i was hoping for Frug to expand a bit more on the situation if he's willing to do so, what makes you assume he's just a lazy bum unwilling to bootstrap his way to a minimum wage job in the local McDonalds ?

but there's plenty of people like him, so the real question is what would you do about it ? cut his benefits ?

as for your negrep, let's quote it and reply. (if only because i find it a interesting discussion)

Investment banking is a small fraction of what constitutes "financial services". Your views read like talking points from a socialist workers pamplet

it may be a relatively small fraction dedicated to the destruction of what the rest of us happen to live off but i challenge you to deny the effects it has produced.

here's a small picture taken from Der Spiegel.

and those bubbles have not grown smaller the last two years. (here's the source)

my post might read like a "socialist pamphlet" but why not go out of your way to disprove it, or argue your opposing viewpoint then ? heck the topic is fitting enough given that the working class is a inherently Marxist concept, so do go on.

[Frug]

I get what you are saying Frug but I dont really understand why we should feel sympathy for your friend - to me it seems like he is a fuckup because of his own ongoing poor decisions.

Maybe it's because my degree was psych, or maybe because I'm inclined to be sympathetic towards people and that makes me biased (not likely), or just because he's my friend and I've seen first hand the shit he's been though, but here's an analogy to illustrate why it is I don't feel about him the same way you do: Recall your experience in the rape jokes thread, and imagine your beliefs prior to meeting someone who introduced you to the reality of her experience. It's really easy to tell someone to overcome their mental hurdles, but that doesn't mean it's easy for them to do it, or even that they can do it without a helping hand.

It's something that comes up whenever you talk about changing a person's behavior. There is an apparent contradiction between the concept of free will and being a slave to your own psyche. How you pick and choose when to be sympathetic towards people versus blaming them for their shortcomings is going to be based on a lot of personal bias.

A false dichotomy between blaming everyone for not doing what they should be doing or dismissing all bad behavior and removing personal responsibility is hard to avoid. I think he's responsible and needs to put effort into changing his life, but I also think it's unreasonable to expect that without significant intervention.

I met up with him over the weekend. He complained about how he just bought diablo 3 and how it sucks. I yelled at him that the reason I didn't buy it is because I didn't have the money and neither did he. He gave a blank stare but I hope he got the message.

[ValorousBob]

Quote from page 1, but I thought it was interesting.

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore (the 5% being illegal immigrants with no family network, and to a certain degree the homeless). Even an unemployed person with no savings has the bare essentials and even a few luxuries available to them through welfare and social housing.

You basically answered this is in your quote, but doesn't the formation of the modern government safety net make the idea of "working to survive" and by extension the "working class" a completely obsolete concept? As long as you define working class as "working to survive" it makes it technically impossible to have any significant working class in a country with a social safety net.

[cheeba]

relevant article

[kzig]

As other people have been hinting, it's difficult to agree on whether a partcular class exists without first agreeing on how to define it, or at least what it used to be when it existed. If the old definition no longer makes any sense, then we should come up with a new definition, or perhaps even a whole new classification. I haven't yet seen anyone post a consistent set of historical definitions for lower, middle and upper class, so I'd say we're on rather shaky ground.

Any propositions for modern definitions? Here's my suggestion, in financial terms:

• Lower class: anyone for whom the interest on a payday loan works out cheaper than the amount they typically end up paying each month in bank charges due to unauthorised overdrafts or bounced cheques (e.g. Ralara, not so long ago).
• Middle class: people whose tax burden mostly consists of income taxes.
• Upper class: anyone for whom it is more tax-efficient to avoid being paid a salary.

[Lallante]

I get what you are saying Frug but I dont really understand why we should feel sympathy for your friend - to me it seems like he is a fuckup because of his own ongoing poor decisions.

Maybe it's because my degree was psych, or maybe because I'm inclined to be sympathetic towards people and that makes me biased (not likely), or just because he's my friend and I've seen first hand the shit he's been though, but here's an analogy to illustrate why it is I don't feel about him the same way you do: Recall your experience in the rape jokes thread, and imagine your beliefs prior to meeting someone who introduced you to the reality of her experience. It's really easy to tell someone to overcome their mental hurdles, but that doesn't mean it's easy for them to do it, or even that they can do it without a helping hand.

It's something that comes up whenever you talk about changing a person's behavior. There is an apparent contradiction between the concept of free will and being a slave to your own psyche. How you pick and choose when to be sympathetic towards people versus blaming them for their shortcomings is going to be based on a lot of personal bias.

A false dichotomy between blaming everyone for not doing what they should be doing or dismissing all bad behavior and removing personal responsibility is hard to avoid. I think he's responsible and needs to put effort into changing his life, but I also think it's unreasonable to expect that without significant intervention.

I met up with him over the weekend. He complained about how he just bought diablo 3 and how it sucks. I yelled at him that the reason I didn't buy it is because I didn't have the money and neither did he. He gave a blank stare but I hope he got the message.

I dont really understand how you can seperate "him" and "his psyche" in this way. So his psyche (i.e. irresponsibility, inability to rationally plan etc) is responsible for him throwing money away on shit like Diablo 3 but "he" is not to blame for this nor can he be expected to change his attitude towards such things?

Don't confuse "not expecting" improvement because you know he doesnt care enough to change with "not expecting" improvement because change is too difficult to do alone. The former is entirely his fault, the latter justifies the view you have on intervention. But you can't change at all unless you want to and it doesnt sound like he wants to.

[Lallante]

your opinion is entirely reasonable on the surface, but for it to be true unemployment would have to be near 0%, and it's not, both the UK and Denmark is sitting uncomfortably at around 8% right now, there simply put is not enough employment to the people willing to take it, let alone suitable employment for what people have chosen to educate themselves as, unless you have a magic wand to wave that problem away, your position is going to be inherently unreasonable.

the job market here is anemic to at around 170000 people, with a average of 5000 jobs changing hands every month, that's new positions, and rehires, it's my understanding that the UK is looking at similar figures in terms of proportions, if a bit more dire.

The relevant measure is long term unemployment not the absolute proportion of unemployed as the latter includes structural, cyclical and natural unemployment. Whats interesting is that even in the UK with reasonably high unemployment there are many sectors which dont have enough people going into them (*like plumbing). Plenty of people are doing pointless degrees or not bothering to train at all and then wondering why they cant get jobs in their chosen field (e.g. computer games design). The remaining unemployed are victims of the downturn, and hopefully will get the jobs they need when things pick up or the government realises some stimulus is needed.

social equality starts at a even footing at the first steps of life, not at your contributions to society. otherwise you are implying that a engineering graduate adds just as much value to society as a street sweeper, and that's patently untrue, well unless all he can get in terms of jobs is as a street sweeper. (only then, he's a net drain on society from the purely economic standpoint, but that's a different discussion all together)

I said the same effort, not the same value. I agree that an even footing is necessary but an even footing ALSO implies an equal attitude is needed to get the same social equity output. A level playing fiueld will still result in unequal results if only one "player" is willing to make the nececessary effort to "play".

so your answer to all the graduates that get dumped into a severely pressed job market with noticeably less jobs than applicants is "retain to something useful!" ?

Yes, or wait out the recession, whichever they think is more sensible.

i dont think you quite see the scale of the problems we face Lallante, when you got engineering students (ie. the hard stuff in university, with relatively low attraction but traditionally fairly high demand in the job market) graduating with top grades walking into months and months of unemployment being eventually being so lucky they manage to find a minimum wage job at a local Mcdonalds it's not just something you can "retrain away" or simply assign the blame to the people unfortunate enough to be unemployed and say "that's that!" its a real structural problem with the potential to blow up if/when the euro deigns to collapse.

I dont know the situation in your country, but in the UK engineering graduates are in very high demand still and are not struggling to find work (autistic anti-socials aside). This also applies to science grads.

even the "retrain to something useful!" argument is tenable at best, the IT sector that has consistently been growing for the last ten years is flooded with people that have decided to retrain in that direction, i know consulting companies numbering no more than 20 people total who are getting in excess of 100 unsolicited applications, on a weekly basis, while just having enough orders to make the ends meet without downsizing.

I dont really see your argument here. The fact that the IT sector is growing means jobs are being cvreated, so retraining towards it is, prima facie, sensible.

i dont and i was hoping for Frug to expand a bit more on the situation if he's willing to do so, what makes you assume he's just a lazy bum unwilling to bootstrap his way to a minimum wage job in the local McDonalds ?

From what frug has written that much seems pretty obvious. Applying Occam's razor isnt entirely unreasonable here. If someone able bodied with no money refuses to even try to get a job, they are much more likely to be lazy than they are to be making some complex spiritual protest about the inequity of society.

but there's plenty of people like him, so the real question is what would you do about it ? cut his benefits ?

it may be a relatively small fraction dedicated to the destruction of what the rest of us happen to live off but i challenge you to deny the effects it has produced.

here's a small picture taken from Der Spiegel.

Ok so you seem to have forgotten the context of the comment you made that I was repping. You were saying "fuck all financial services because of casino banking". I replied that investment banking is a small proportion of financial services so your argument doesnt follow. Demonstrating how significant, financially, that small proportion is, is utterly irrelevant - your criticism of financial services doesnt apply to most financial services.

my post might read like a "socialist pamphlet" but why not go out of your way to disprove it, or argue your opposing viewpoint then ? heck the topic is fitting enough given that the working class is a inherently Marxist concept, so do go on.

By pamphlet I mean you just repeat talking points, like the one above about banking, but sometimes (this last post aside) they dont really engage with the argument they are targetted at.

[Tsubutai]

This style of

Cutting people's posts up into little chunks and then

replying to them piece by piece

is hugely annoying to read, makes for bad nitpicky debate/discussion

and is generally shit. Please don't do it.

[Phrixus Zephyr]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

[Lallante]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

Actually I do a lot of pro bono and volunteering in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK.

[Dark Flare]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

Are you insisting that more than 5% of the population has to work just to survive?

I know definitions of what's needed to "survive" have changed lately to include bullshit like televisions, but seriously?

[NoirAvlaa]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

Actually I do a lot of pro bono and volunteering in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK.

How do you fit that in with your 80 hour weeks at minimum wage?

[Phrixus Zephyr]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

Actually I do a lot of pro bono and volunteering in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK.

That explains a lot if your only two interactions with the rest of the country are your own life style and one of the poorest estates in the country.

According to your first post anyone who owns their own business (regardless of what it is or how successful is it) or is on a salary (regardless of how much it pays or what the job is) or went to University (regardless of the course, how they did or what they are doing now) is at the very least middle class and everyone else is 'underclass' because they probably don't work anyway.

How can i engage in a discussion if your view is so detached from the reality of how people live in this country?

[Dark Flare]

How can i engage in a discussion if your view is so detached from the reality of how people live in this country?

By discussing what you believe is the reality of life in the country and how it affects the class system, rather than name calling.

[Tsubutai]

What do you mean exactly when you say people don't work just to survive? That most people in the country aren't on the breadline and living paycheck to paycheck?

[Lallante]

The point that you singularly fail to engage with is that in the UK at least, "working to survive" doesn't really exist for 95% of the population anymore.

You're so out of touch with reality it's laughable.

Actually I do a lot of pro bono and volunteering in Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the UK.

How do you fit that in with your 80 hour weeks at minimum wage?

With difficulty, honestly. It helps that I live within walking distance of work and my work lets me take time out during the day to go do pro bono work provided it doesnt interfere with my normal work.

[Lallante]

What do you mean exactly when you say people don't work just to survive? That most people in the country aren't on the breadline and living paycheck to paycheck?

I "live paycheck to paycheck" in that I start running out of money just before my next paycheck, so I dont mean that, but I do mean that most people aren't struggling to feed their family.