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No hate for the middle class. I can't help but enjoy the irony of people who thought they had solidarity with capital talking like Ned Ludd all of a sudden.
I don't think many people understand what working class means.
If you have to work to live, then you are working class.
This meme fundamentally misunderstands what the working class is.
No hate for the middle class.
The middle class is a fiction* created by the owning class to divide the working class.
Hate it and those who created it (the fiction, not the people who like to think they are part of it).
*image description in source if anyone needs it
Thinking artists have money seems incorrect.
Depends on if they do furry commissions, those are apparently lucrative as fuck
Ohh so an office job is "bourgeois" now?! give me a break...
People who earn less than I do are poor. People who earn more than I do are bourgeois.
At best some of the most privileged are petite bourgeois near the end of their careers.
I hate this in fighting, we are all working class. We all starve if we stop working. Yes, some have much more than others, yes it is unfair, however our interests are still broadly aligned.
Creatives have been shit on economically for a long time. Chokepoint Capitalism goes into detail on how artists, writers, and performers have had a hard time getting paid since day one. That's a large reason why the actors and writers guilds exist. You can always find someone who wants to do creative work. If you don't have a union ensuring gigs are paid well it's a race to the bottom.
The fact a lot of people were clamoring for AI so it could do the work and they could stay home and make art only for AI to come about and replace artists is kind a of hilarious in like a dystopian hellscape kind of way.
Middle class people don’t need to work.
Creatives usually don’t make much money.
Are you just hating on the working poor for no reason?
Middle class absolutely needs to work though. They just aren't complete wage slaves because they have some personal capital to absorb urgent/unplanned expenses and can survive without working for some time. Ultimately they still need to work to survive though
Middle class people are not working poor. Creatives are sometimes working poor, and other times are making $250k as UX designers.
And sometimes making minimum wage as UX designers.
Probably fall into the working poor category.
But I don’t know anyone making minimum wage doing UX.
Startups love to hire kids out of college who can do anything U, I, or X related with regards to tech. My first programming job I made minimum wage for the first few years and then got a $0.50 per hour raise before the company went out of business.
There’s FAANG and then there’s everyone else. Some jobs can be pretty bad in terms of pay. That first job also had a seasoned professional graphic designer with multiple decades of experience and she wasn’t making much more than I was.
That’s crazy. And definitely not the norm, even outside of big tech.
I’ve been in 4 startups, no one was making that little money even 20 years ago.
Yep, I've worked at tech places with bad pay but never "decades of experience and only making a little more than minimum wage". Especially if they held a Senior title. It's been a wild ride listening to their story evolve.
That first job also had a seasoned professional graphic designer with multiple decades of experience and she wasn’t making much more than I was.
How seasoned could they be if they weren't able to demand a raise or work somewhere else for more as a UX Designer? How could a seasoned professional be so close to entry level, and minimum wage?
Know your worth, companies aren't just going to hand you money to be nice. Negotiate, and if they don't play ball, prove you're as good as you think you are somewhere else.
Not everyone lives in the bay area / silicon valley. Sometimes folks with tech talent live in more rural areas (or smaller college towns) and there may be only a few options around. It’s great that people have more opportunity to work from home, back then that wasn’t the case. If you did work remotely, you’d probably keep in touch on irc or icq and you’d periodically have a GoToMeeting or a WebEx conference (Zoom wasn’t a thing).
Also, skill level does not equal pay level. We don’t actually live in a meritocracy.
Some of us have been working remote since way before Covid.
Skill level doesn't equal pay level directly, but if you have decades of experience in a technical field like UX Design and are still making close to minimum wage in the USA, that does sound like a skill issue.
Again, my guy we do not live in a meritocracy. If the businesses in your local area aren’t hiring UX (well at that time, they were just called “graphic designers” though they did UX work, we hadn’t defined UX as an industry at this time), then you don’t get a job, regardless of skill level.
Middle class isn't real, the closest is petite bourgeoisie, who own Capital but also must work to live.
Middle class people don't need to work
If you don't need to work, you are not middle class. Middle class still earn a paycheck.
Creatives now need subscription based software to do their jobs so they no longer own the means of production
normally bitching about verbiage is straight out of the cia manual for disrupting leftist orgs but holy shit OP I assure you the guy who does the drawings on birthday cards is not an appropriate target for your ire.
Meta: what movie is this template from? I swear I've seen it too.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
People have been losing their jobs in all sectors a lot longer than you think, OP. First time?
That's the entire purpose of the Workers asking "first time?" It's known that it has been happening, lmao
It’s clearly your’s and OP’s first time in noticing literally everyone around you going through the same thing. the world doesn’t revolve around you.
