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What about the working poor? That's a much larger group that is much more need of policy changes.
When it comes to economic reform (rather than compression, according to that show with the hand job calculations), from the bottom up is many times more effective than the middle out shit the Dems keep trying.
Um, OK. I'm on board. Are we supposed to argue now?
Nah, I'm good
Not OP, but good on you two.
Id argue middle class are now also the working poor
I had the same thought but (in complete sincerity) then I thought that might be my privilege telling me that. We (my family personally) have it rough on what is legitimately a decent salary and are very much paycheck to paycheck, but there sure are a lot of folks worse off than we are, either in creature comforts, living situation, income, or all three.
On the other hand, I think measures that help the true working poor seem unlikely not to also help the struggling middle class, who seem to be slowly getting absorbed into the working poor in any case. So I think a rising tide will float all boats anyhow.
I have thought the same thing before - used to live in a house where the windows didn't even close, calculate food budget to the cent, could feed myself dinner for 35c and would spend two hours driving for an extra hour of pay. Not there any more fortunately.
I think saying "we shouldn't complain as others are worse" is putting thinking in the wrong direction. If you can't enjoy your life with enough to get by then that also needs to be fixed - don't short your own efforts and struggle.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't at all feel “we shouldn’t complain as others are worse”.
My situation is not nearly as bad as your former situation, nor that of many others. If I use the same terms to describe my situation as theirs, I feel I'm minimizing their difficulties by doing so. Yes, it would only take a couple of substantial setbacks to put us in that situation now, but that's a very different thing than already being there.
In any case, I do think prioritizing the "working poor" is fine, and also that the "struggling middle class" are likely to be co-beneficiaries of many improvements that help the working poor if steps are taken there.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the working poor in America consider themselves "middle class". So that's how you have to direct your message if you want it to reach the most people.
Getting low income people to the polls is a big part of this. If a particular group does not vote, then politicians have no incentive to care about them.
https://nlihc.org/resource/new-census-data-reveal-voter-turnout-disparities-2022-midterm-elections
Other way around: if a politician doesn't care about you and people like you, you have little incentive to care about them beyond avoiding a greater evil.
It's the job of a politician to earn votes, not the job of voters to enable complacency and corruption.
While it's of course best when everyone votes and I've never missed a chance myself, I can kinda understand why a lot of people don't feel up for waiting in line for hours just to cast a vote for "not the complete monster"
While I understand the complaints, I completely disagree with your argument. We are not ruled top-down, but bottom-up. They can vote third party if they choose, but if they do not vote at all, then no, a politician should not be expected to try to convince them otherwise. The politician has no guarantee that they actually can become engaged, and it is fully reasonable to expect them to try to secure the votes of people that actually are engaged. It's just how the incentive structure is logically set up, an already safe bet is more likely to win than a risky one.
Bullshit. 90%+ of all federal level politicians are much more likely to pass a bill or support an initiative if the richest and most powerful 10% but nobody else supports it than if it has majority support in the broader population. That's the DEFINITION of top-down
That kind of attitude is exactly what caused the current situation where there's a right wing to far right party, a literal fascist party, and at most a dozen or two center left politicians in all of Washington.
Nor do the people have any guarantee that the politician is worth waiting in November weather for several hours.
If you hired a plumber who did nothing about your clogged toilet, would you celebrate not hiring the other plumber who would have broken your pipes and kicked your dog?
Politics is work and voters are customers, NOT employees.
In other words, the miserable status quo that benefits the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
If you completely ignore any possibility of a politician enticing voters by promising and doing good things, sure. That's a pathetically meek mentality that enables corruption and bad performances, though.
Except the only reason those donors have that power is due to our campaign finance laws, which only exist because republicans in the SC allowed infinite money into politics with Citizens United. If we had far greater voter turnout, this would have been impossible, as that puts dems in power and they do not believe in unlimited money in politics. Will play by those rules once those rules are made, though.
The idea that the US should never become fascist is a value, likely one that you and I share. It is not some high law though. If voting voters want fascism, then fascism is what we should get. It is our responsibility as voters to prevent this.
No, voters are absolutely not customers. We are 100% employees of the greater political sphere. From regular every day voters, to volunteers running polling places and campaigns, to people standing up to run for office. It's all, 100% on us. We cannot simply shirk our duty, otherwise our democracy will change, as was intended by the framers.
It's the people that do not vote that enable all the corruption. Not the people that go out and make themselves heard.
I would argue that building up the middle class involves uplifting the working poor class, you gotta get those middle class people from somewhere.