JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,767
This is part of a response to another post in a different thread and I thought it merited a separate thread.
First let's define what the 'middle class' is. In the Old World, 'middle class' meant anyone who was not a noble and yet owned significant capital in the form of businesses, etc. This is what the Marxists refer to as the bourgeois and not what Americans think of as middle class, which makes a lot of young radicals look stupid when they use bourgeois to apply to doctors, lawyers and cooks, lol.
I think this Wiki article on the topic is fairly helpful.
American middle class - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My own concept I go by is more based on function rather than income, that meaning the middle class is between the upper class who do not have to work to make a living and can live very comfortably off investments, trusts and that sort of thing, and the working poor and poverty stricken on the opposite end of the scale.
This is basically all the degreed white collar workers at the top end, doctors, lawyers, scholars, etc to the lower end of skilled tradesmen and managerial professions.
Statistically I don't think it is valid to simply assign a specific level of income to define the bounds between the upper, middle and lower classes. I look at it this way; those who do not have to work to live very comfortably in homes worth seven digits, full time servants, etc, we are talking about the top 1% of income earners are the upper class, and the working poor are those below average income levels, i.e. the bottom 50% are the lower class.
For our purposes the following tax revenue data from income brackets is very useful. It shows the total taxes paid after credits, not what they are supposed to pay in theory, which is most often used by those who defend the rich, but is the total of what they ACTUALLY pay.
Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data | Tax Foundation
If you look at the data for 2009, the top 1% paid $318 billion in federal taxes, while the middle class (> 1%, < 50% income bracket) paid $528 billion ($846 billion- $318 billion), almost twice what the upper class or rich people paid.
I hope that is helpful. We middle class Americans have long been the strength of our nation. From native born tradesmen to hard working upwardly mobile immigrants, we have long paid the most in taxes and held the reigns of government by dominance of the political system. In part this necessitated laws that kept the wealthy and corporations from buying elections, but those laws have been gutted and now the corporate money and the extremely wealthy like Soros and the Koch brothers own our political system since the Citizens United ruling in 2010.
Campaign finance in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It is quite simple to avoid 'coordination' and it is also ambiguous enough to allow the continued use of laws against such coordination to ensnare individuals the oligarchy does not like.
This is how the GOP ended up with a loser like Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate in 2012. The Wall Street bankers gave funds to a so-called independent finance group that exclusively attacked Romney's opponents and dragged them down in the polls one at a time till only Romney was left and pretty much became the default candidate.
Political action committee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We have let the Republic's political system be bought, literally bought, by the top 1% and corporations they control. These people largely do not have the same values as middle class Americans, generally hate and despise us and will abuse the hell out of our government on a level exponentially worse than anything the old Democratic patronage system ever did.
Will the middle class ever regain control of the US political system?
First let's define what the 'middle class' is. In the Old World, 'middle class' meant anyone who was not a noble and yet owned significant capital in the form of businesses, etc. This is what the Marxists refer to as the bourgeois and not what Americans think of as middle class, which makes a lot of young radicals look stupid when they use bourgeois to apply to doctors, lawyers and cooks, lol.
I think this Wiki article on the topic is fairly helpful.
American middle class - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
My own concept I go by is more based on function rather than income, that meaning the middle class is between the upper class who do not have to work to make a living and can live very comfortably off investments, trusts and that sort of thing, and the working poor and poverty stricken on the opposite end of the scale.
This is basically all the degreed white collar workers at the top end, doctors, lawyers, scholars, etc to the lower end of skilled tradesmen and managerial professions.
Statistically I don't think it is valid to simply assign a specific level of income to define the bounds between the upper, middle and lower classes. I look at it this way; those who do not have to work to live very comfortably in homes worth seven digits, full time servants, etc, we are talking about the top 1% of income earners are the upper class, and the working poor are those below average income levels, i.e. the bottom 50% are the lower class.
For our purposes the following tax revenue data from income brackets is very useful. It shows the total taxes paid after credits, not what they are supposed to pay in theory, which is most often used by those who defend the rich, but is the total of what they ACTUALLY pay.
Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data | Tax Foundation
If you look at the data for 2009, the top 1% paid $318 billion in federal taxes, while the middle class (> 1%, < 50% income bracket) paid $528 billion ($846 billion- $318 billion), almost twice what the upper class or rich people paid.
I hope that is helpful. We middle class Americans have long been the strength of our nation. From native born tradesmen to hard working upwardly mobile immigrants, we have long paid the most in taxes and held the reigns of government by dominance of the political system. In part this necessitated laws that kept the wealthy and corporations from buying elections, but those laws have been gutted and now the corporate money and the extremely wealthy like Soros and the Koch brothers own our political system since the Citizens United ruling in 2010.
Campaign finance in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It is quite simple to avoid 'coordination' and it is also ambiguous enough to allow the continued use of laws against such coordination to ensnare individuals the oligarchy does not like.
This is how the GOP ended up with a loser like Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate in 2012. The Wall Street bankers gave funds to a so-called independent finance group that exclusively attacked Romney's opponents and dragged them down in the polls one at a time till only Romney was left and pretty much became the default candidate.
Political action committee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
We have let the Republic's political system be bought, literally bought, by the top 1% and corporations they control. These people largely do not have the same values as middle class Americans, generally hate and despise us and will abuse the hell out of our government on a level exponentially worse than anything the old Democratic patronage system ever did.
Will the middle class ever regain control of the US political system?
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