The Middle Class Is Dead (It Just Doesn't Know It Yet)

There used to be four classes of Americans:

1. The upper class

2. The middle class

3. The working class

4. The poor

Today, there are five classes:

1. The billionaire elite class

2. The predator class

3. The (fake) middle class

4. The working poor

5. The absolute poor

Today we’re going to focus on class #3.

The middle class is a myth.

Fifty years ago, America had a thriving (albeit largely Caucasian) middle-class, where families owned homes and cars on a single income, and enjoyed fat pensions, cheap vacations, buy-it-for-life-quality goods, and affordable education for their kids.

That life is dead.

It was sacrificed on the altar of greed to make space for the new billionaire class.

Today, the American “middle class” simply cannot afford a house without two fat incomes and a massive mortgage, cannot afford cars without huge automotive debt, their pensions will be worthless thanks to engineered inflation, buy-it-for-life goods have been replaced with shoddy subscription serfdom, and affordable education for their children is a national scandal.

So what the heck happened?

We’ve discussed this before: Worker productivity has soared in the past fifty years, but real inflation-adjusted pay is down… while every cent of wealth the workers created went straight to the new parasite classes. If billionaires hadn’t robbed all that productivity since 1971, you would be working three days per week for twice as much money.

The middle class only appears to be alive because of vast amounts of debt:

• Two people work around-the-clock at jobs they hate to pay a massive mortgage, amortized over 30–40 years, or an unlimited number of years if they’re rent-trapped under a land-lorder.

• They work side-hustles and night gigs to stay on top of car payments, credit card minimums, student loans, and medical repayments.

• Their pension numbers are steadily going up thanks to inflation, but in reality, they’ll be worthless by the time they die — if the pension funds aren’t raided by whatever private equity firm eventually devours the company the pensioners worked for.

Like I said, the middle class is dead, but with the animating force of debt to make it seem like it’s still alive and well.

In other words: The middle class is a zombie class.

How to test if you’re middle class or not:

It’s as simple as asking yourself a very scary question: If your sources of debt-financing disappeared overnight, where would you be?

• If the bank called in your mortgage…

• And automotive finance made you pay off your car loans…

• And Mastercard/Visa insisted on 100% repayment tomorrow…

• And whatever predator owns your student loan and medical debt demanded re-payment in full.

Where would you be?

For most fake “middle-class” Americans, the statistically average answer is:

Absolutely f#¢ked.

If, by some magical bit of luck, you’d still own a home and a car and be able to send your kids to college…

Congratulations!

You must be over the age of sixty. ;)

(Or you work for a bank or are a land-lorder or have a huge stock portfolio, but I doubt any members of the parasite class read Surviving Tomorrow anymore.)

Jokes-that-aren’t-jokes aside, I’m sure you can see my point:

There are almost zero non-predators under the age of forty who can genuinely call themselves members of the bona fide middle class.

And this is a major problem.

Late-stage capitalism is devolving into feudalism — assetless debt peonage and subscription serfdom for the masses, with massive riches for our corporatist creditor overlords.

To recap:

You are not middle-class if you are not well on your way to debt-free homeownership.

You are not middle-class if you do not own your car, own your furniture, and are free of student loans and medical debt.

You are not middle-class without an ironclad source of retirement funds.

You are not middle-class if your kids will never own a home.

Previous generations of middle-class people enjoyed all these things, but now, enriching the billionaire and parasite classes is far more important.

So give up your delusions.

Know your place.

You aren’t middle class.

You’re the working poor, slaving your life away to enrich the richest people in human history.

So keep working, keep hustling. Keep buying garbage from corporations. Keep staying in Airbnbs. Keep voting for right-wing parties like the Republicans and Democrats. Keep pretending it’s moral to blame debtors instead of creditors. Keep rejecting ideas like debt cancellations and banning interest and taxing for-profit land-lording out of existence.

Because you know best.

You’re “middle class,” after all.