A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
Yeah, I think people who say that don't realize a few key things.
First, they don't understand the 'poverty tax' - how not having money for things like a security deposit, reliable transportation, or bulk buying actually costs you more in the long run.
And second, they don't see how thin the margin for error is for most middle-class families. One medical bill or job loss is all it takes to fall behind.
They also don't understand that the impact of the "lazy poor" is exaggerated by the rich to turn your attention away from The Big Theft.
Middle class IS below the poverty line.
The poverty line is a number made up by the wealthy to keep the "less poors" at odds with the "more poors" So that we don't join forces and guillotine the motherfuckers.
There are conventional definitions of the poverty line. In France, it is defined by the national institute of statistics as:
The poverty threshold is conventionally set at 60% of the population's median standard of living. It corresponds to a disposable income of €1,288 per month for a single person and €2,705 for a couple with two children under 14 years old. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5759045
There's the Working class, who can't live in society without trading their time for money in some way, or being given charity. And the Capital class, who can live in society without doing either.
It's soooo much easier to be a class traitor when you don't realize you're part of that class
There is no true definition of middle class. People making only $30k a month consider themselves middle class and people making $1 million also think they are middle class.
If we guesstimate middle class by comparable lifestyle when the term was coined, it starts around 250k in today money. Comfortable house, lots of kids, multiple cars (but not luxury), at least one real traveling vacation every year, never worrying about paying bills or buying food, all while saving enough to retire by 55. There aren't many people in the US with the income to match that. I'd say the middle class is dead.
That's a lot of caveats.
There is no 'middle' class. There is only ownership and labour.
I would argue there are at least 3 classes:
The impoverished class that makes their living from the charity of others
The working class that makes their living from their labor
The ownership class that makes their living from owning things
You basically can't live on charity one of the classes you mentioned almost doesn't exist
How about those that own things and control people so much that they can somehow get enough charity to live off it?
I somehow fail to understand how that manages to be a viable method.
Fair enough, but in a more just system, the impoverished class would barely exist, if at all.
Fair enough, but in a more just system, class would not exist, at all.
FTFY :P
There is only ~~ownership~~ parasites and labour.
FTFY. You’re welcome.
Ha! Many thanks
'the rich get richer, the lazy live for free, and the middle class pays for it all'
This is what the country subreddit I abandoned more than a year ago became this fucking mentality. Like they're toying with the idea of eugenics and limited voting rights. They're figuratively and literally scared of the actual poor.
There's never been a middle class. The illusion of the "lazy poor" is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.
Yes there was.
In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.
Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.
Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million...
You are correct! And it's crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.
Weird how everything's turning to shit now that corporations don't pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.
"Too big to fail" was actually just "too big to stop." So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.
The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people's bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.
Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.
Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.
actually most middle class voters voted and supported for the policies that destroyed themselves.
they started deinvesting our healthcare and education systems in the 70s, often as a part of the backlash of civil rights and the economic stagnation of the 70s.
Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?
It was the people who didn't have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it's sustainability.
And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we're always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don't have a country.
Adjusted for inflation, 11k in the 60s is equivalent to 120k today. You can get a house for that money. Not a big house, but houses weren't that big back then either.
The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).
In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.
It's not fabricated, these people honestly think one can live the "welfare queen" lifestyle. Reagan said the words and it resonated with the Republicans, Fox News ran with it. But really, this isn't some master plan. Unless you've been through it or tried getting welfare, you can't know how hard it is and how little you get. I've talked to many people like this.
You have to earn below 130% of the poverty line to get food stamps. More you make, less you get. I will say that when I first moved here I was getting a ridiculous amount for a single guy, and they just kept sending it, no questions asked for 6-months. Those days are long gone.
God knows what you have to do to get an actual check, but you have to be worse off than merely needing food stamps. And those checks are paltry. Unless you're renting a room in someone's house, you're not making rent.
Unemployment is a fucking joke. In Florida, employers have to pay $7,200 when you first start, and they have 6 months to get it all paid into the unemployment fund. I would have got a MAX of $4,200, then it's over. That was less than a month's pay from my last job.
There is a gauntlet to be run to get a single penny. And you have to keep running that gauntlet, over and over again. I could go on and on, but I figured out 3 decades back that it's easier, less time consuming, and more profitable, to work a shit job 40-hours a week.
This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.
I'm Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.
For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.
But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself--those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.
My wife is fighting for her 10-year green card right now. It's a fucking nightmare.
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. Millionaires are closer to zero than they are the ultra rich.
Sadly for your arguments, currently it is easier to lose any amount of money than to win it.
"I am closer to becoming a millionaire than Elon Musk is."
There is no middle-class. There is the working class and the aristocrats.
It's really hard to even decide what middle class is. I have a good job, good benefits, savings and retirement account, but if I lost my job we'd be homeless in 6 months.
Err from memory isn't there a pretty clear definition of classes in a capitalist society. Initial definitions were lower class being people who derive wealth from selling their labour and upper class being people who derive their wealth from owning the means of production. Middle class came about when workers started buying/setting up companies so suddenly there were people who both sold their labour and owned means of production.
So regardless of what ever you think of your job, unless you own a company you are lower class. There's probably a portion of middle class who would be on the edge but you'd think most should be resilient enough to weather most storms.
That said, if some dipshit in government makes some idiodic decisions then yeah, a lot of middle class people are going to find their stable businesses are a house of cards.
"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." - James Baldwin
No truer words.
That's a good explanation of generational poverty and why it's so expensive to be poor, but if Vimes is looking for the real reason the rich are so rich, he should read about surplus labor value. He seems to have ignored the broader class dynamics at play under capitalism.
Or maybe things are different on Discworld, I haven't actually read the books.
Statistically, middle class is not close to poverty, the issue is, there's no more middle class
Who says that?
Maybe there is one of the lucky 10,000 here who has not heard of boots theory.