this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
162 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37724 readers
455 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I interpret this as really "people want to go back to a time before income inequality had ramped up as much as it has" but in their minds the overall feeling that the US is worse now for the non-elites is associated with other things
The people who think this apparently think the middle class lived differently than they actually did in the 1970s. I am solidly poor and lower class and I live better than middle class people did then.
Servers and service workers weren't saving up and flying to Europe or South America back then.
And while poverty has increased and the middle class has shrunk, that isn't necessarily because of income inequality. They are two different things. There is not a set amount of money or wealth that is divided up.
They still aren't. They're barely keeping roofs over their heads, let alone taking expensive vacations.
I can't think of any other plausible explanation.
I worked as a server and in coffee shops and yes, they most certainly are. Not all, but plenty. People generally fly to other countries much, much more than they used to. It's not just the wealthy any more, at all.
undefined> I can’t think of any other plausible explanation.
Housing is scarce and much more expensive for starters. Middle class people like using housing as an investment and vote to keep housing scarce because of that. It's not just the .1% that are voting for those policies.
China has a whole lot more income inequality too but much less poverty and a much larger middle class than before. The world as a whole does. Those two dynamics are not that related. Income inequality can grow whether the middle class is growing or not and can grow or decline whether there are more people in poverty or less.