4 ms·
There is no middle class anymore. What you mention are lower class pressures. Middle-class pressures, back when there was one, meant you were expected to get a
by ncmncm 4y ago
There is no middle class anymore. What you mention are lower class pressures.
Middle-class pressures, back when there was one, meant you were expected to get a new car every year. There were reasons for that, back then: tetraethyl lead additives in the gasoline destroyed engines in no time. But it was not a big drain on middle-class people, just an expense to keep up with.
"They" have been very, very good at convincing lower-class people they are now middle class. It worked! Fully half the voting population imagines, when they think they are voting to keep their own money away out of the poors' hands, really are voting to keep extreme rich peoples' money in the rich peoples' hands, along with most of what could have been the voters' money, besides.
They have got so good at it, people actually elected an out-and-out confidence grifter to the Presidency, and helped stage a coup attempt to keep him there.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoMy parents were middle class, maybe upper middle class. They felt exactly zero pressure to get a new car every year. Yes, this was still in the days of leaded gasoline. I think, rather than "they" convincing people, that you have made up a definition of "middle class" that exists only in your own mind. It doesn't correspond to either the real world or to the definition that the rest of us are using.
- ProjectArcturis 4y agoI don't know why you're claiming middle class people used to get a new car every year. It used to be that a man with a high-school education could provide fairly well for his family as the sole breadwinner. But a new car every year is fantasy.
- refurb 4y agoI know plenty of people who live off one income, not always but usually the father. They’re usually people working trades in the mid-west, but they own a nice house, have cars, and savings in the bank. It’s still possible. But it seems like few people are interested in those careers or living in those locations any more. Usually because neither is prestigious enough. If everyone wants an office job that pays enough to live in a trendy HCOL coastal city - yeah, a single income with high school only won’t cut it.
- ncmncm 4y agoA new car every year is fantasy today. It was a commonplace for upper middle class, before. A wage-earner could be comfortably lower middle class. A professional could be upper-middle.