It’s funny how the system of owning extra properties to rent out as part of a person’s retirement is so unreachable for current generations that they don’t even really know about it. Being able to own things so you didn’t have to work when you were old used to be how the system convinced people to buy into it.
Now that this is now longer feasible for almost anyone, there’s little reason for people to feel the system is worth upholding. That’s what kept support for capitalism so strong after guilded age; a middle class supported by generous housing policies and strong unions. As such a reality becomes distant memory, people are more willing to reject capitalism and liberalism than every before.
It’s important to bring in the longer history. Before large numbers of Americans were reliant on rising housing prices, there existed these things called pension plans, which would pay out from when you retired until when you died, and you could live on that money. But the capitalists didn’t like that, because they didn’t want to pay people for doing nothing over the last few decades of their lives. So then we got the current system, which has people speculating on property and throwing money into IRAs. In other words, we had a system with guaranteed benefits and we replaced that with one based on gambling and the ridiculous belief that the value of property would always outpace inflation. And this all happened in our parents lifetimes, or in our grandparents lifetimes, depending how old you are.
I kind of have to be in awe of how some of these people will complain that pensions disappeared and retirement is based on gambling, but also vote against their own interests and call us (relatively) younger folks lazy complaining losers that can’t afford anything. Hmm…
That’s what I’m saying. The petty property owning class has been completely replaced by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos. They pretend like they’re helping the bourgeoisie, but home ownership is already dead.
They are the bourgeoisie. The term basically means you get your income from capital (investments) and not from your labor.
There is the petite bourgeoisie. They’re the shop owners and such who tend to still work at those shops alongside their other workers. Historically, they have not been good allies of the working class, though there are a few exceptions.
Are you really an middle class city dweller when you don’t interact with cities or society at large at all? I think people with $10B+ in wealth, or people with political ties to Trump would be considered ruling class, not middle class city-dwellers.
“Middle class” does not map to the bourgeoisie. The whole lower/middle/upper class distinction is so poorly defined that you can say literally anyone is middle class. Might be upper middle class or lower middle class, but you’re never not middle class. Worker/bourgeoisie/nobility is more specific, and it’s a trap to try to see it as directly mapping over.
The term bourgeoisie was a distinction from the nobility who owned the land by right of birth. At the time, there was no other way to own land by purchasing it on the open market. The bourgeoisie emerged with early capitalism, and wanted to own land. The American and French revolutions were largely driven by the bourgeoisie with the help of the workers.
In chapter I of the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie are the heroes. They did break the power of the nobility’s stranglehold on land ownership. Right-libertarians sometimes use this fact to say capitalism is great, but this is the wrong way to look at it. Marx and Engles never argued things should stay there just because anyone can theoretically aquire enough wealth to own land.
It’s funny how the system of owning extra properties to rent out as part of a person’s retirement is so unreachable for current generations that they don’t even really know about it. Being able to own things so you didn’t have to work when you were old used to be how the system convinced people to buy into it.
Now that this is now longer feasible for almost anyone, there’s little reason for people to feel the system is worth upholding. That’s what kept support for capitalism so strong after guilded age; a middle class supported by generous housing policies and strong unions. As such a reality becomes distant memory, people are more willing to reject capitalism and liberalism than every before.
It’s important to bring in the longer history. Before large numbers of Americans were reliant on rising housing prices, there existed these things called pension plans, which would pay out from when you retired until when you died, and you could live on that money. But the capitalists didn’t like that, because they didn’t want to pay people for doing nothing over the last few decades of their lives. So then we got the current system, which has people speculating on property and throwing money into IRAs. In other words, we had a system with guaranteed benefits and we replaced that with one based on gambling and the ridiculous belief that the value of property would always outpace inflation. And this all happened in our parents lifetimes, or in our grandparents lifetimes, depending how old you are.
I kind of have to be in awe of how some of these people will complain that pensions disappeared and retirement is based on gambling, but also vote against their own interests and call us (relatively) younger folks lazy complaining losers that can’t afford anything. Hmm…
The bourgeoisie are all dead, all we have left are capitalist oligarchs.
If you make money from owning something, like a landlord, then you are the bourgeoisie. The landlords want the same things someone like Musk does.
That’s what I’m saying. The petty property owning class has been completely replaced by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos. They pretend like they’re helping the bourgeoisie, but home ownership is already dead.
They are the bourgeoisie. The term basically means you get your income from capital (investments) and not from your labor.
There is the petite bourgeoisie. They’re the shop owners and such who tend to still work at those shops alongside their other workers. Historically, they have not been good allies of the working class, though there are a few exceptions.
Are you really an middle class city dweller when you don’t interact with cities or society at large at all? I think people with $10B+ in wealth, or people with political ties to Trump would be considered ruling class, not middle class city-dwellers.
“Middle class” does not map to the bourgeoisie. The whole lower/middle/upper class distinction is so poorly defined that you can say literally anyone is middle class. Might be upper middle class or lower middle class, but you’re never not middle class. Worker/bourgeoisie/nobility is more specific, and it’s a trap to try to see it as directly mapping over.
The term bourgeoisie was a distinction from the nobility who owned the land by right of birth. At the time, there was no other way to own land by purchasing it on the open market. The bourgeoisie emerged with early capitalism, and wanted to own land. The American and French revolutions were largely driven by the bourgeoisie with the help of the workers.
In chapter I of the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie are the heroes. They did break the power of the nobility’s stranglehold on land ownership. Right-libertarians sometimes use this fact to say capitalism is great, but this is the wrong way to look at it. Marx and Engles never argued things should stay there just because anyone can theoretically aquire enough wealth to own land.