Comment on People who say 'the rich get richer, the lazy live for free, and the middle class pays for it all' don't realize how expensive it is to be rich and how close middle class is to being below the poverty line.

owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Yes there was.

  In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.

  Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.

  Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million…

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  • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You are correct! And it’s crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.

    Weird how everything’s turning to shit now that corporations don’t pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.

    “Too big to fail” was actually just “too big to stop.” So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.

    The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people’s bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.

    Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.

    Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.

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    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      actually most middle class voters voted and supported for the policies that destroyed them.

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      • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

        Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?

        It was the people who didn’t have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it’s sustainability.

        And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we’re always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don’t have a country.

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  • Triumph@fedia.io ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It is worth noting that:

    • The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).

    • In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.

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  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You’re right, but that’s not middle class–that’s working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of “middle” class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.

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    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Now you’re just playing with definitions.

      “Middle class” is the term most people use.

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      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

        I mostly agree. They’re synonymous today, but I think there’s still an important distinction.

        The term “middle class” is distinct from the “lower class.” But those two are more or less the same when compared to the “upper class” (what I would call the “wealth class”). Both lower and middle classes need to work in order to survive, while the wealth class has enough money to live without working (many of them still work, but it’s optional for them).

        Any distinction between lower and middle class ends up harming both, and allowing the upper class to hoard more wealth. I generally try to promote the term “working class” because it doesn’t divide us, and more accurately portrays the differences between classes.

        An illustration in this vein:

        1000036719

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  • ch00f@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Was going to bring up interest rates, but apparently a 30 year mortgage in 1960 was something like 7%. Which…isn’t that bad.

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    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Lyndon Johnson wanted to have a massive war in Vietnam without raising taxes, so he printed money to pay for it. Nixon doubled down on LBJ’s plan. The OPEC oil embargo really made inflation soar. Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to run the Fed and bring it under control. Carter’s plan worked, but only after Reagan won. Then Reagan turned around and started cutting taxes without a way to pay for the cuts.

      In 1968 when Nixon came in, ‘middle class’ was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough left over for a few luxuries. By the time Bush Sr finished, ‘middle class’ was two incomes. In 1968 $1 million was a massive fortune; by 1993 it was what a rich guy paid for a party.

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    • Today@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Mortgage rates were in the teens in the early 80s.

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      • ch00f@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yeah, that’s why I brought it up. I always assumed they were high in the 60s too.

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• shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s not fabricated, these people honestly think one can live the “welfare queen” lifestyle. Reagan said the words and it resonated with the Republicans, Fox News ran with it. But really, this isn’t some master plan. Unless you’ve been through it or tried getting welfare, you can’t know how hard it is and how little you get. I’ve talked to many people like this.

  You have to earn below 130% of the poverty line to get food stamps. More you make, less you get. I will say that when I first moved here I was getting a ridiculous amount for a single guy, and they just kept sending it, no questions asked for 6-months. Those days are long gone.

  God knows what you have to do to get an actual check, but you have to be worse off than merely needing food stamps. And those checks are paltry. Unless you’re renting a room in someone’s house, you’re not making rent.

  Unemployment is a fucking joke. In Florida, employers have to pay $7,200 when you first start, and they have 6 months to get it all paid into the unemployment fund. I would have got a MAX of $4,200, then it’s over. That was less than a month’s pay from my last job.

  These is a gauntlet to be run to get a single penny. And you have to keep running that gauntlet, over and over again. I could go on and on, but I figured out 3 decades back that it’s easier, less time consuming, and more profitable, to work a shit job 40-hours a week.

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  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.

    I’m Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.

    For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.

    But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself–those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.

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• DomeGuy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The rich 1% are the middle class. America discarded the hereditary upper class when we banned titles of nobility.

  In our free society there are only two classes : those with enough money that they never have to work again, and those without.

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  • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Yeah thats the “middle class”. They aren’t part of the working class (serfs) but also arent the hereditary owners of counties (nobles.).

      Rich fucks who have more money than anyone else and yet bitch about how hard they have it has literally always been what “middle class” means.

      Washington and Jefferson was middle class. FDR and JFK were middle class. King George, Queen Elizabeth and King Charles are not

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    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      Wealth does messed up things to our brains.

      Nobody wants to believe they’re the “bad guys”, or “privileged”, or anything like that. So when you have more wealth than 99% of other people out there, you (consciously or subconsciously) come up with ways to justify it.

      In this case, the multimillionaires believe they are the “normal”, middle-of-the-road class, because they compare themselves against the ultra-rich. And anyone who has less than them must be lazy, or bad with money, or some other moral failing. Because if the millionaires aren’t morally superior, the only other explanation is privilege or greed, and they can’t live with that.

      There are a handful of wealthy people who haven’t succumbed to that as much. Dolly Parton is a great example–one article I read suggested she’d be one of the wealthiest people in the world if she weren’t donating 90 to 95% of her income for most of her career. But when you have empathy and a lot of wealth, you end up with just a little wealth and a lot of grateful people.

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