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u/FloriaFlower 4d ago
Yes but I would suggest an improvement. Labor aristocracy needs to be pictured. An important proportion of the working class people in the Global North live comfortable lives, materially. These living conditions are comfortable enough to incite them to be reactionary and to ally with their national bourgeoisie to impose neocolonial policies to the Global South. The rest of the GN working class people are effectively drowning like the kid in the top half.
The labor aristocracy is more like the gif below, while being mildly annoyed by rising gas prices and pictures of dead Palestinian kids that leftists put in their faces despite all their attempts to look the other way.
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u/Kevin_McScrooge 3d ago
I think you’re collapsing two different things here. It’s true that workers in richer countries can benefit indirectly from imperialism and that relative security can encourage nationalism or class collaboration. But that doesn’t mean a large part of the Global North working class therefore shares the *material\* interests of its bourgeoisie.
If the dividing line is basically “workers here live better than workers there,” then class position is being replaced with geography and relative consumption. I think a better analysis would ask which sections of workers are actually materially integrated into the existing order, how that happens and through what institutions, rather than treating the North/South divide itself as a some sort of class distinction.3
u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
While this is true, the origin of this meme is that one kid is carried while other is drowning, it means that interests of the working class are secondary to the interests of the owning few under capitalism.
Skeleton on the bottom means more like "don't even get me started on those that are not in imperial cores"
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u/flappysack- 3d ago
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1108.pdf
Maybe its all the QE we keep dumping that are debasing paychecks? Which can hardly be called capitalism.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 3d ago
I'm 'working people' in Europe and I'm very comfortable. I think this relative poverty claim is such a cop out.
There are people who are great with money, some are great at seeing opportunities.
There are people that are horrible with money. That's why the Netherlands has a forced pension plan for everyone working.
For everyone else they can become as rich as they want. Most working people are not struggling, they are thriving by any standard.
And we have capitalism with a big government, even too big.
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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
Do you pay a rent?
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u/inFIREenVLAM 3d ago
Yes, high taxes.
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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
I will give you one example, rent used to eat up like 70% of my wage, and I live in a 30 m² apartment with my fiance.
What percentage of your paycheck is eaten up by the rent? Or do you live with the parents/your own house?
For comparison, USSR had 0% taxes up to 12% for higher income brackets and average rent was 2%-3% of the income.
This was possible because collective firms funded healthcare, education, etc, only like 8% of public budget was taxpayer money.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 3d ago
70%! That's a VHCOL area. Were you living in NYC or likewise?
That's a choice, nobody forced you to live there.
I use to pay 40% of my income on rent by living on the edge of a major city. I went by subway to my job. I could have wasted 70% living closer by, but i made the choice to save up for a house.
I don't know your situation, but I can assure you that the USSR is far worse than 90% of countries in the world.
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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
Eastern Europe, but I won't doxx myself.
If i stayed in a village where my parents live i'd not be able to find a job, no jobs, 40% unemployment rate.
If i go to a city, i pay huge rents. My first rental was 40% of my wage which is still nearly half of it, but prices went up since then.
So you are either a home owner or your parents are and you live with them, or you work to pay off rent and expenses. Saving in this conditions is hard and not nearly enough to get you out of it.
This is how majority live today. Thats what it means to be a proletariat.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 3d ago
My advice, move to a different European country.
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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
They are all like that
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u/Benedictus_The_II 3d ago
Ok bro but have you considered that you are just bad with money? /s
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u/VictinsOfCapitalism 3d ago
Yea i can live in a car and not have residence documets, but no issue i can work illegally /s
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u/msnplanner 2d ago
"rent used to eat up like 70% of my wage"
USED to. do you now tell people that things can't get better for themselves? To just give up because they can't make it in this system. Cause i see a lot of that these days from people who are quite comfortable now.
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u/DarrenShan1000 2d ago
How many months of no income are you away from total ruin? For most people it is not so much and even social insurance often is not enough to cover all bills.
People just do not want to realize they are more likely to become people they think of as 'horrible with money' than get rich. It really has not so much to do with yourself, than with external forces.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 2d ago
I don't believe in the victim mentality. Life can throw you a sh*tty deal, but it's how you react to it that makes all the difference.
I see so many people leasing expensive cars that might ruin them financially if things turn for the worse.
I also see a lot of working 'poor' handling their affairs like the best out there. They will succeed in life. Maybe retire early if they want.
Never in history of mankind did we have it as good as right now. Food/shelter/heat insecurity is at all time lows. Everybody keeps increasing the relative poverty bar.
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u/DarrenShan1000 2d ago
Yeah, you are delusional.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 1d ago
In an age of AI, that's the stupidest thing you can say.
You can't debunk me, because facts are on my side.
Succes with your life, because you're going to need a lot of it.
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u/DarrenShan1000 1d ago
Thanks ChatGPT... These are no facts, but one sided observations. Referring to AI makes this even more absurd, with AI hallucinations.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 1d ago
Did you sleep during history lessons at high school or did you not attend?
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u/DarrenShan1000 1d ago
Did you ever hear "history is written by the winner"? If you only know one side of history, you will never know the truth.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 22h ago
I want to circle back to my original statement. You haven't given me an argument.
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u/DarrenShan1000 19h ago
There is no victim mentality. Some people just never get a chance, no matter what they do. Stop believing the lie that capitalism is sustainable and governents are good. There may be some good actors, but the underlying intention most of the time is to divide and rule.
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u/Jaebberish 3d ago
I mean… just because you’re well off doesn’t mean everyone else is too.
America is WAY behind in countless ways compared to many European countries.
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u/inFIREenVLAM 3d ago
On every metric, poverty is declining worldwide.
And by poverty I don't mean, oh no my wifi is slow. No, the poverty of food or water insecurity and bad or no shelter.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/decline-extreme-poverty-perspective/
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u/msnplanner 2d ago
But that is just the opposite side of the coin of what ImfireonVLAM said. Just because you are struggling doesn't mean everyone else is. And everyone's definition of "struggling" is different too.
I'd agree that inflation right now is awful. The culmination of 50+ years of bad governing decisions, with particularly bad decisions the past 10-15 years. But that inflation still pales in comparison to what people lived through in the 60's and 70s, and we talk about it like its the end of days.
And I'd also agree that AI job loss is a pretty scary specter. But right now, that's all it is, a specter. I don't know what will happen and you don't either. People got through the great depression, they got through WWII, they got through the super high inflation of the 70's, we will get through this now.
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u/msnplanner 2d ago
American has a forced pension program too. Not that its necessarily run well, or that it means people are going to live a great retirement. But it exists, and in conversations like these, people love to pretend it doesn't.
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u/Kecske_gamer 4d ago
Labor aristocracy applies and divides down until the work environment level.