"Bottom 60%" is a funny way of saying the majority.
"Bottom 60%" is a funny way of saying the majority.
53 comments
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bottom 60%
have you been reading my diary
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Article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-of-life/
The analysis, from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), looks beyond whether people can afford daily necessities like food and shelter to consider whether they have the means to pay for things like the technology tools necessary for their jobs, higher education, and health and child care.
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The Ludwig Institute also says that the nation's official unemployment rate of 4.2% greatly understates the level of economic distress around the U.S. Factoring in workers who are stuck in poverty-wage jobs and people who are unable to find full-time employment, the U.S. jobless rate now tops 24%, according to LISEP, which defines these groups as "functionally unemployed."
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By those standards, the lowest-earning Americans around the U.S. are falling well short of what they need to maintain a decent standard of living, according to LISEP. These households, which in 2023 earned an average of $38,000 per year, would need to make $67,000 to afford the items the group tracks as part of its index, which also includes the cost of professional clothing and basic leisure activities.
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The analysis, from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), looks beyond whether people can afford daily necessities like food and shelter to consider whether they have the means to pay for things like the technology tools necessary for their jobs, higher education, and health and child care.
Gee I wonder why people aren't having kids anymore, must be the white genocide!
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bottom 60%
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Btw this is what I mean when I say that the United States barely counts as part of the imperial core
Western Europe is the imperial core. The average Western European materially benefits from the spoils of imperialism and lives a high quality life because of it. The average American is an exploited colonial subject.
The United States is still a colony, the European Empires just consolidated and moved their headquarters to the colony.
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I think the United States is still the imperial core because it's where all the power resides and where all the powerful people take refuge. It's just that most Americans are not part of the imperial core even if they are forced to reside within its borders.
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A subset of Internal Colonialism Theory that explains the dual nature of the US is called Differential Segregation, an adapted internalized version of the same strategy used in colonial and neocolonial client states overseas
The deliberate creation of comprador classes within every US demographic, income and zip code based for minority groups and the country club/urban-rural divide among white Americans
Differential Segregation is the de facto social organizing principle of US society, it's obvious in a kind of "You see it only when you notice it" way
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I'm going with this. Also a bit of "why not both?" US/EU can both be basically equal. I don't see a point in distinguishing beyond wanting to get into the details (which is fine, whatever)
As far as the most Americans not being part of it, I think that's a yes and no situation.
Yes in that most Americans don't benefit in a really meaningful way from being in the imperial core. And the few benefits which used to exist are quickly eroding to nothing.
I'd say no because, for now anyway, there does remain the benefit of like "not being drone striked randomly" that all the direct targets of US imperialism must contend with every day of their lives. That's a pretty substantial benefit to living in the core. Or has been at least. For the most part. Of course that outward display of violence is also quickly falling back in and worsening within the US on basically a day to day basis. Instead of guys with "US Army or Marines" printed on their camo suits being the ones illegally snatching people up, shooting them, etc. it's masked hoglets in civilian clothing or maybe police-esque uniforms with kevlar vests saying "POLICE ICE." Same end result.
I think there's a psychological argument to be made as well along the lines of "because they believe it's true, it becomes true." I guess meaning that even if the majority of Americans no longer benefit from living in the imperial core, if they still believe they benefit due to conditioning, propaganda, etc. then it kinda doesn't matter. They position themselves against the rest of the world and willingly submit to a mindset that allows imperialism to continue. Sort of like the mythos of the core and what it provides is more important than reality.
That feels really weird in my mind, maybe someone else has explained it better. But much like a lot of stuff we take for granted, such as the entire global financial system, I can entertain an idea that the imperial core need not benefit the majority of citizens in it to be the imperial core. All it requires is the power projection through military and economic means. If the average citizens of the core are complacent through propaganda or through actual substantial material gains, it doesn't really matter in the end. Wealth extraction is still happening regardless of how that wealth is spread back at home. The western EU currently spreads it more equally in comparison to the US, but that doesn't really matter.
(Sorry for rambling and long reply. Was sort of working out why I agree with this sentiment and just kept typing. Oh well)
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I want to agree but in the years post-wwii america had a huge boom that dwarfed europe in standard of living. ofc this only lasted for what a decade or two then it all gut gutted for neoliberalism and now fascism.
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This is why I think that while countries are an important unit of analysis, proper categorizing of core, periphery, and semi-periphery needs to be more fine grained too.
The US definitely is part of the imperial core, and indeed is the hegemon of the capitalist-imperialist world system. But, that doesn't mean that there aren't peripheral and semi peripheral parts of the US.
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It's the correct analytical framework for understanding the modern imperial capitalism that ignores national borders
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I think it makes more sense to frame it as the US being multiple countries. The DC-NY corridor is the imperial core. California is one of the more privileged client states like South Korea. The middle is exploited colonies.
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No. USAins don't get to extract themselves from this. The spoils of empire are unevenly distributed but the USA is the fucking great Satan, you are complicit and the fact that you get ripped off in the deal doesn't change that. The American heartland isn't a fucking colony, it's a neglected region.
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Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance, infotech, and the so-called creative class. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of the declining heartland or on the dimly lit fringe of sprawling cities. This is America’s hinterland, populated by towering grain threshers and hunched farmworkers, where laborers drawn from every corner of the world crowd into factories and “fulfillment centers” and where cold storage trailers are filled with fentanyl-bloated corpses when the morgues cannot contain the dead.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/H/bo28433484.html
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One of the telltale signs that a leftist has matured in their analysis of imperialism is their introduction to 'Internal Colonialism Theory'
Even more impressive if that leftist comes to those conclusions without ever encountering Robert Blauner
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The US is not a colony. The US is simply the militaristic (Fascist) arm of Capital, making the shift from the pacifist stage (Social Democrat) after the new deal era. Much of Europe is still in the Pacifying era, though this seemingly is ending itself with their rising focus on military/war, Immigration, and weakening of their social programs.
The average Americans live under terrible conditions specifically due to the higher degree of developed capital leading to a higher degree of monopolization of that capital. (As evidenced by so many of the richest people being Americans).
We don't need to try an place everything under a colonialist framing.
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US is imperial core. It’s just that the whole labor-aristocracy thing has been greatly exaggerated. Whenever I hear that I just want to ask them if they’ve ever been to Philly or Baltimore or NYC or LA or Portland or… or, or. There is so much poverty in the US, and its visibility is a feature - a warning to the proletariat who barely clasp a semblance of an income.
The economy in the US is highly financialized, this is true. But the fact that this is nevertheless necessary labor is demonstrated by 1) the fact that it is hired at all in private industry, 2) the profound aggression by which the state fights unions and other collective efforts.
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53 comments
Cowardly media freaks, say it with your chest
You just know Trump wants to say this about poor white trash but he can't, at least not yet, anyway.