Maybe there is one of the lucky 10,000 here who has not heard of boots theory.
this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Showerthoughts
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'the rich get richer, the lazy live for free, and the middle class pays for it all'
This is what the country subreddit I abandoned more than a year ago became this fucking mentality. Like they're toying with the idea of eugenics and limited voting rights. They're figuratively and literally scared of the actual poor.
Rimjobsteve moment
Err from memory isn't there a pretty clear definition of classes in a capitalist society. Initial definitions were lower class being people who derive wealth from selling their labour and upper class being people who derive their wealth from owning the means of production. Middle class came about when workers started buying/setting up companies so suddenly there were people who both sold their labour and owned means of production.
So regardless of what ever you think of your job, unless you own a company you are lower class. There's probably a portion of middle class who would be on the edge but you'd think most should be resilient enough to weather most storms.
That said, if some dipshit in government makes some idiodic decisions then yeah, a lot of middle class people are going to find their stable businesses are a house of cards.
I say all the time how expensive it is to be poor now!! You kinda need a phone; you might find a cheap car but the insurance will be $$; i can barely leave my house without getting on a toll road; you might find a cheap apartment but the rent will include $200 in fees. Every interaction is designed to be profitable for someone and we're losing.
Statistically, middle class is not close to poverty, the issue is, there's no more middle class
As I've always said, the greatest trick the idle wealthy class ever pulled was convincing the middle class that the working class is the enemy.
The middle class is part of the working class.
working class is dirty. middle class is clean.
my parents hated my working class friends and their parents because they saw them as dirty gross people. they adored my richer friends who had pools and nice cars.
my parents thought of themselves as middle class because we had a clean house and clean cars and didn't do 'dirty' things that working class people do, like drink. they also didn't have manual labor jobs.
it's more than about money. it's about lifestyle and branding.
i have a middle class job, but a lot of people think i'm a poor working class loser because i don't have the lifestyle markers and consumption habits of middle class. like i only own a base model car, in don't travel internationally 2x a year, i don't live in a 'new' house/condo, i don't go out to restaurants with $1000 bills, etc
There is comfortable, wealthy, and the super rich. The first ones still look at money as the rest of the population, while the ultra wealthy (the top .1% or higher) use their assets for power. They don't have to concern themselves almost all of the time on price tags for things, it's irrelevant. It's what their influence can allow them to do that is far more important. So yes, the richest live an expensive lifestyle, but they don't care.
I agree with others on the middle class falsehood. You either have enough assets and income to be able to live well, or you don't. At this point many millionaires are not that well off either because their expenses put them in the same situation the poorer people have to deal with. Maybe it's not only one paycheck away from disaster, but they have their own buffer zone that's not as large as they'd like in bad times. Likewise, there are "poor" people who manage their budgets well enough that they are comfortable, but because they don't have a lot they are at the mercy of things around them so that can disappear quickly.
The rich line is where you can lose entire businesses or a house or other large material thing and the money part doesn't phase you.
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I have never heard that saying before.
It feels very "white working class suburban conservative" in it's sentiment. I grew up around a lot of people I can imaging saying that who were a bad month away from being truly poor.
Depending on how you were raised you might think that this class is living in luxury until you realize that your parents relied on tull time double income to make that middle class happen. Marketing for this class is horrible for fighting class divide. It gives the impression that wealth is achievable for everyone which is just a lie.