As an addendum, let me emphasize: if someone is making 10^{5.5} dollars per year, they're rich. My point is that economic disparity is so incredibly bad in the US that being "rich" doesn't mean one has anything meaningfully in common with "owner-class rich" in terms of political power *or* security with respect to having basic needs met. It is a mistake for someone who is rich to think that it is not in their best interest to show solidarity with other laborers.

I'm saying that *even if you are rich*, you almost certainly need a union, and you damn well ought to be fighting for labor rights. That you may not be rich in the future, and you damn well should be fighting against oppressive poverty. That wage stagnation may soon leave you unable to afford groceries, especially in the climate crisis. That all the above is true even if you don't have a shred of empathy, and only gets more true if you give a flying fuck about other people.

I'm saying that *even if you are rich*, you almost certainly need a union, and you damn well ought to be fighting for labor rights. That you may not be rich in the future, and you damn well should be fighting against oppressive poverty. That wage stagnation may soon leave you unable to afford groceries, especially in the climate crisis. That all the above is true even if you don't have a shred of empathy, and only gets more true if you give a flying fuck about other people.

@imyxh I think I made that clear by saying my comment was about class consciousness? Even in terms of basic needs, though, a labor-class millionaire is one bad emergency away from having absolutely no basic needs met, while there's no world in which that's true for owner-class billionaires.

@xgranade i guess what i'm saying is that i do not believe a meaningful amount of class consciousness can be shared between labor-class millionaires and the portion of the working class that cannot afford to own property. the metric space that the notion of financial similarity exists in is just so starkly different between the minds of those in the former category and those in the latter. and in the minds of the latter, your point about emergencies relates more to small transition probabilities between classes rather than any serious notion of similarity at current time.

put another way, you cannot honestly expect someone who lives paycheck to paycheck to think a millionaire is more similar to them than to a billionaire. so it is impossible to have a shared sense of class consciousness between the paycheck-to-paycheck and the millionaire.

@imyxh And to be sure, I am absolutely not saying that someone with immense amount of economic privilege is anything other privileged. What I'm saying is that it's a mistake for said privileged rich person to think that they're somehow no longer a laborer or sensitive to attacks on labor. The best reason to care about people in poverty is that no one should live in poverty, humans deserve better. The second best is that having one's basic needs met *now* doesn't guarantee they will be met later.

There's a massive difference between owning one home, the home you live in, that could burn down and leave you homeless, that you need to work to afford maintenance and utilities and taxes on, and being so incredibly rich that you own a city block that you can charge rent on.

They're both rich, but they're not the same.

@xgranade Chris Rock had it right: "Shaq is *rich*. The white dude who signs Shaq's cheques is *wealthy*."

As an addendum, let me emphasize: if someone is making 10^{5.5} dollars per year, they're rich. My point is that economic disparity is so incredibly bad in the US that being "rich" doesn't mean one has anything meaningfully in common with "owner-class rich" in terms of political power *or* security with respect to having basic needs met. It is a mistake for someone who is rich to think that it is not in their best interest to show solidarity with other laborers.

@xgranade do you mean 10^5.5?

@ZenHeathen There are exceedingly few things I agree with Chris Rock on, but that might be one.

@ehashman Yep. I can count, I swear.

@ehashman Thanks for catching that.

There's a massive difference between owning one home, the home you live in, that could burn down and leave you homeless, that you need to work to afford maintenance and utilities and taxes on, and being so incredibly rich that you own a city block that you can charge rent on.

They're both rich, but they're not the same.

@xgranade normally having a math degree means I can't add 🤪

As an addendum, let me emphasize: if someone is making 10^{5.5} dollars per year, they're rich. My point is that economic disparity is so incredibly bad in the US that being "rich" doesn't mean one has anything meaningfully in common with "owner-class rich" in terms of political power *or* security with respect to having basic needs met. It is a mistake for someone who is rich to think that it is not in their best interest to show solidarity with other laborers.

@xgranade I feel like "rich" as a word is very bad, because it fails to draw the difference between upper middle-class and owner-class. I personally earn a high wage, but I'm completely working class. I've talked to people who make much more money than me, some of them business owners and owning houses, but none of them are "safe". For money, you can buy convenience - and if you make a lot, you can even dream or buy a house, which is a necessity. But there are lightyears between that and someone like Bezos.

And yeah, tech people really have no class consciousness - they think if they buy more convenience, they are hot shit. A lot delude themselves with right-wing talking points, thinking the oppressive politics won't harm them based on some ideological reason. It's frustrating. Join a union.

@imyxh I guess when you put it that way, yeah, I fundamentally disagree, I think that's a fundamentally inhumane way of looking at things, and I think that view is part of how we got to where we are now, where the only people who can have any confidence in their ability to do things like buy medicine also can do things like buy entire governments.

@xgranade yes, an inhumane system has created an inhumane sentiment in the lower class. not something we can really blame them for. it is a sentiment that exists, and so long as it does, i don't think there can be much shared class consciousness between software engineers and grad students.

(i am not sure what you mean about confidence to buy medicine. though i struggle financially, i feel like it would be disingenuous to claim that i cannot confidently buy medicine. but perhaps it is not worth getting into)