4 ms·

> Evidenced by the fact that the lower classes were able to elect a president that the upper middle and upper classes most definitely did not want elected. Tho

> Evidenced by the fact that the lower classes were able to elect a president that the upper middle and upper classes most definitely did not want elected. Those who earned more than $50k a year were more likely to vote for Trump[1]. There's also this[2]: > During the primaries, Trump supporters were mostly affluent people. > Trump voters weren’t majority working class in the general election, either. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/631244/voter-turnout-of-the-exit-polls-of-the-2016-elections-by-income/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/631244/voter-turnout-of-... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8bab332bf87c https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/0...

malvosenior 8y ago
There is more to class than just income. A plumber can out earn a journalist for instance. If you look at the education numbers you can see that the highly educated greatly favored Clinton. You can also look at media influence, technology influence... This is a more in depth look at the numbers: http://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/ http://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the...
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  I'd argue that any characteristics beyond income and accumulated wealth are secondary when we are talking about economic class.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    I'd argue that income and wealth are two very different things. Your numbers didn't say anything about wealth, just income. Again, the plumber earns a lot but the journalist inherits wealth far beyond the earnings of the plumber. There are a lot of other things to take into account such as access to network, parental influence, ability to mingle with upper class people... Blue collar roles can out earn white collar but blue collar people can't be upper or even upper middle class as the upper classes have many effective gating mechanisms to keep them out.
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      Pedigree and social class aren't economic class. Just because you won't be let into someone's club despite having considerable wealth does not mean the two of you are in different economic classes.
      - malvosenior 8y ago
        If I earn 300k a year maybe I can pay for club membership (if they let me in) but I would in no way have comparable wealth to members that were going to inherit 100M from their families. You're very focused on income, but people in the upper classes are not. In fact, high earning professions are often looked down upon because when you have family money, it's seen as gauche to work hard for what would be scraps compared to the real family fortune.
- souprock 8y ago
  There are huge problems with that data. It equates a degree in physics with a degree in romance novels. I feel strongly that the physicist is far more educated. Somebody with a pilot's license or a welding certification is considered to be less educated ("non-college") than a person with a college degree of negative market value. What the data actually counts is years spent in a bookish classroom.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    Class is more than just individual earning potential. I think a lot of people here (myself included) know that the scientist is more educated than the romance novel degree holder. The part we don't talk about though is that the people with degrees of "negative market value" often have those degrees because their families are rich enough that they don't have to work for a living and can do things like pay to study romcoms. This is one of the arguments people make against unpaid internships in media and fashion industries. Only rich kids can live in NY for peanuts so these internships effectively filter out poor people (as they were designed to do).
    - cannonedhamster 8y ago
      In the US, we don't have any other social stratifications that would justify your response. Typically when we speak of class in the US we are talking exclusively about economic class. The problem with your argument is that our democratic institutions aren't fine. (Sure, sure Representative Republic). For instance in nearly every single state we have a group of people that are underrepresented by their electorate. In blue states it's typically conservative viewpoints and in red states it's liberal voices. Because of gerrymandering, in some cases unlawful, we've lost most of our moderate representatives that have led to the gridlock and partisanship we have today. Proportional voting or a move to a parliamentary type of electorate would help these issues and allow for more voices to be heard. There's also the fact that more populous states have less representation in the House than do less populous states due to the limits imposed on the number of Representatives due to space requirements. This is problematic. Add to that the Citizen's United verdict that lifted campaign contribution limits on corporations while still enforcing them on individuals and I think I've made my point that our Democracy is in trouble without even touching the malfeasance by the actual political actors of either party. The real problem though is that the middle class, the foundational aspect of a functional democratic process is being hollowed out. When you look at the fact that money is considered speech and the top .001 of the US makes as much every year as the bottom 80% of the country there is no way that even the amalgamated voices of the bottom 80% could hope to have the same political sway as those with money and this divide is only getting worse. Education is a poor classification of Americans, except for the fact that it generally correlates that the higher education you achieve the more likely you are to have higher income. Obviously your position of negative value degrees are the exception, however I'd be less likely to think that the wealthy are getting these poor degrees as are the poor. The wealthy can just write/ghost write their books and have them immediately be New York Times bestsellers without a single person other than themselves buying the book.In fact this is a common trick. The poor are generally less educated than the wealthy and this leads to an information imbalance that would prevent people from going into poor degrees instead of fields in demand like nursing, math, computer science, etc. I'm sure many people on this board know someone stuck in a poorly paid IT helpdesk job because they got a Bachelors in IT or something else that didn't lead to money.

malvosenior 8y ago

There is more to class than just income. A plumber can out earn a journalist for instance. If you look at the education numbers you can see that the highly educated greatly favored Clinton. You can also look at media influence, technology influence... This is a more in depth look at the numbers: http://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/ http://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the...

fucking_tragedy 8y ago
I'd argue that any characteristics beyond income and accumulated wealth are secondary when we are talking about economic class.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  I'd argue that income and wealth are two very different things. Your numbers didn't say anything about wealth, just income. Again, the plumber earns a lot but the journalist inherits wealth far beyond the earnings of the plumber. There are a lot of other things to take into account such as access to network, parental influence, ability to mingle with upper class people... Blue collar roles can out earn white collar but blue collar people can't be upper or even upper middle class as the upper classes have many effective gating mechanisms to keep them out.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    Pedigree and social class aren't economic class. Just because you won't be let into someone's club despite having considerable wealth does not mean the two of you are in different economic classes.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      If I earn 300k a year maybe I can pay for club membership (if they let me in) but I would in no way have comparable wealth to members that were going to inherit 100M from their families. You're very focused on income, but people in the upper classes are not. In fact, high earning professions are often looked down upon because when you have family money, it's seen as gauche to work hard for what would be scraps compared to the real family fortune.
souprock 8y ago
There are huge problems with that data. It equates a degree in physics with a degree in romance novels. I feel strongly that the physicist is far more educated. Somebody with a pilot's license or a welding certification is considered to be less educated ("non-college") than a person with a college degree of negative market value. What the data actually counts is years spent in a bookish classroom.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Class is more than just individual earning potential. I think a lot of people here (myself included) know that the scientist is more educated than the romance novel degree holder. The part we don't talk about though is that the people with degrees of "negative market value" often have those degrees because their families are rich enough that they don't have to work for a living and can do things like pay to study romcoms. This is one of the arguments people make against unpaid internships in media and fashion industries. Only rich kids can live in NY for peanuts so these internships effectively filter out poor people (as they were designed to do).
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    In the US, we don't have any other social stratifications that would justify your response. Typically when we speak of class in the US we are talking exclusively about economic class. The problem with your argument is that our democratic institutions aren't fine. (Sure, sure Representative Republic). For instance in nearly every single state we have a group of people that are underrepresented by their electorate. In blue states it's typically conservative viewpoints and in red states it's liberal voices. Because of gerrymandering, in some cases unlawful, we've lost most of our moderate representatives that have led to the gridlock and partisanship we have today. Proportional voting or a move to a parliamentary type of electorate would help these issues and allow for more voices to be heard. There's also the fact that more populous states have less representation in the House than do less populous states due to the limits imposed on the number of Representatives due to space requirements. This is problematic. Add to that the Citizen's United verdict that lifted campaign contribution limits on corporations while still enforcing them on individuals and I think I've made my point that our Democracy is in trouble without even touching the malfeasance by the actual political actors of either party. The real problem though is that the middle class, the foundational aspect of a functional democratic process is being hollowed out. When you look at the fact that money is considered speech and the top .001 of the US makes as much every year as the bottom 80% of the country there is no way that even the amalgamated voices of the bottom 80% could hope to have the same political sway as those with money and this divide is only getting worse. Education is a poor classification of Americans, except for the fact that it generally correlates that the higher education you achieve the more likely you are to have higher income. Obviously your position of negative value degrees are the exception, however I'd be less likely to think that the wealthy are getting these poor degrees as are the poor. The wealthy can just write/ghost write their books and have them immediately be New York Times bestsellers without a single person other than themselves buying the book.In fact this is a common trick. The poor are generally less educated than the wealthy and this leads to an information imbalance that would prevent people from going into poor degrees instead of fields in demand like nursing, math, computer science, etc. I'm sure many people on this board know someone stuck in a poorly paid IT helpdesk job because they got a Bachelors in IT or something else that didn't lead to money.