this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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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.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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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.
themselves.
there is no billionaire conspiracy dude. the average person is stupid and regularly does stupid shit that defaults their long term interests for perceived short term gains. it's human nature. most people impulse spend on shit they don't need or really want, but their monkey brain wants it because other monkey has it.
the few people who can value their long term gains at the expense of the short term tend to be those that are upwardly mobile economically.
People are just monkeys. Monkeys do what they see because they're stupid and a product of their environment. Billionaires now control everything in that environment, so US monkies mostly see what those billionaires want.
FOX NEWS. Paid for by billionaires so USA Monkies want Citizens United, No child Left Behind, the Patriot act, and Trillions in the national debt for the first time in 200 years of being a nation. Bush W is now okay despite being an idiot because he's surrounded by smart people. But smart people are definitley bad.
FACEBOOK ADS. Paid for by billionaires so USA monkies will vote against Healthcare, their own taxes, and educatiom to fight made up enemies like "libs" and "illegals". Local elections are now won by the dumbest people imaginable that believe these enemies are real. Actual Proffesionals are now suspicious.
TWITTER. Now just owned by a billionaire so USA monkies think Trump is a genius, Fascism is good, and it's totally okay more Americans died from COVID than anywhere else in the world, a death toll higher than all the wars America ever fought in combined. Trump is great because he punishes smart people, and people that point out his COVID bullshit, as those smart people are now your enemy.
This makes Elon wealthy. Zuckerberg Wealthy. And the Murdochs wealthy.
They covered the US in news that it was on fire and keep profiting off of selling fire extinguishers.
There is no fire. (Illegal immigrants, libs, trans, caravans, wmds in Iraq, war on drugs, war on terror, etc) But now half the country votes like there is because that keeps billionaires wealthy instead of actually taxed to benefit society. They are the problem. They know they are the problem. So they purchase as many media outlets as they can, like Bezos, to normalize their greed and it's affects on our country. Just about to the point we don't have one anymore.
It is worth noting that:
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%.
You're right, but that's not middle class--that's working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of "middle" class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.
Now you're just playing with definitions.
"Middle class" is the term most people use.
I mostly agree. They're synonymous today, but I think there's still an important distinction.
The term "middle class" is distinct from the "lower class." But those two are more or less the same when compared to the "upper class" (what I would call the "wealth class"). Both lower and middle classes need to work in order to survive, while the wealth class has enough money to live without working (many of them still work, but it's optional for them).
Any distinction between lower and middle class ends up harming both, and allowing the upper class to hoard more wealth. I generally try to promote the term "working class" because it doesn't divide us, and more accurately portrays the differences between classes.
An illustration in this vein:
collapsed inline media
I've watched people like you shoot themselves in the foot with useless arguments like this since I was in high school.
You can't just say "Tax the rich." No, we have to analyze every term and only use proper nomenclature. Heaven will fall if we call a Social Democrat a Socialist and the seas will part if we confuse an anarchist with a Trotskyite.
I've watched it for years, and I've never once see it help anyone actually win an election.
Holy generalizations, Batman!
My purpose in making the distinction isn't to be pedantic, it's to help clarify the nature of the class warfare we're dealing with. I don't care if you want to use the term "middle class". I only bring up the distinction because of the nature of the original post, which was explicitly noting the false narrative of the "lazy poor".
Tax the rich, restore the middle class, use whatever terminology you want. But understand that the poor are not the enemy of the middle class, and they're not the villains. The rich people are.
Holy genralizations yourself.
When did I say anything about the poor being the enemy of the middle class, or that we aren't all at war with the rich?
If you're going to put words in my mouth please order some chips and salsa to go with it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted to be pedantic, you were.
Now we're involved in a useless argument over terms.
I've made my point twice, and I'm not going to repeat it a third time.
I understand your point, and I disagree with it.
If you decide to continue, you're proving my point; that you'd rather engage in an argument with someone on your side than step back and accept a minor disagreement.
If you don't use proper nomenclature or explain what is meant in detail you have no hope of truly being understood. People's ignorance of what things actually mean is used as a weapon against further understanding, like the good old fashioned "socialism is when the government does stuff and is also evil and any hint of it will introduce satan" or whatever
Being hostile towards proper understanding of a subject is not going to help you actually comprehend it
Two points.
First, you can cut out a third of the words in a sentence and still comprehend the gist of the message. 'Proper nomenclature' might be important in a college essay or a legal writ but in the real world people slur their words and mishear the replies and still manage to get the point across. Words aren't numbers; any word can have a dozen different meanings.
Look at former NYC Mayor LaGuardia. Back in the day he ran on a Fusion Ticket that included Socialists, Communists, and Republicans? You could spent a lifetime trying to sort out the exact definition of what he was. Do you think Nazi Germany was 'Socialist' because of National Socialism.
Second, how much comprehension is actually needed? Do you need to understand the difference between alternating current and direct current to know when to use batteries and when to plug a device into the wall? Do I have to understand aerodynamics to buy an airline ticket? Does someone have to know every single position a candidate holds in order to decide to vote for them?
But that's the issue, I disagree that "we manage to get the point across". A lot of the times we simply don't
And you bring up a great point here, about why it matters to have proper understanding of terms. Otherwise you'd be likely to lump in Nazism in with socialist ideologies. And that has happened a lot. People have used this exact line of reasoning to demonize socialism
This website might not be a college essay, but it is a forum, where ideally you go to to see different perspectives and learn something about something. So I think this discussion perfectly fits here, why should you limit gaining knowledge to an essay or legal writ? There's no rush to get your point across
As for the rest, no you do not need to know the specific differences between AC or DC.. but you better know there is a difference, lest you'll blow a device up if you try to do anything non-standard (like, say, plugging a computer up to a backup power supply. You need to make sure it's an UPS that outputs a proper sine wave, lest things will go wrong with your PC's PSU expecting one, but getting a DC input instead). And you might not need to know every single detail of you candidate.. but I hope you do actually know what their positions are, yes
So, you agree with me 99% but will fight to the death over the last 1%?
Let's take your last paragraph. There are plenty of kids who can hook up the PC, a video game console, and Grandma's VCR and make them all work together without having the least idea of why it works. They know that this plug goes here and not there and that's enough for them. None of them can tell a sine wave from a tsunami.
And you completely ignored LaGuardia being able to be a Communist and a Republican at the same time. He happily ignored the contradiction and got both to agree that he was the best man for the job.
I ignored it because I'm not American and I had no idea what you were referencing, sorry. I got my own qualms with American terminologies but that's a different discussion
So, you couldn't be bothered to take 30 seconds to search for something I mentioned, but I am supposed to fall in line and accept all your definitions and points of view?
That's pretty funny.
Fine, let's play your game
A mayor from almost 100 years ago is irrelevant to this discussion. I don't know about you, but I was talking about contemporary times here
Is this really how you wanna discuss?
First, now you're trying to move the goal posts. If you didn't know who LaGuardia was you should have mentioned it right away.
Second, let's jump to your latest comment and start from there.
If LaGuardia is irrelevant to the current situation, why is Marx relevant? He's been dead longer than Fiorello.
You're the one demanding we use antique terms, and chastising me for trying to update them.
Finally, everything you've posted has proved my first point, that there are people on the Left who will argue and argue instead of trying to build consensus
And so, okay, instead of discussing like this, or rather arguing, I want us to take a step back and ask, "what is it that we're actually trying to achieve here?"
Is the goal to "win" the argument? Is the goal to look at a different perspective? This isn't a debate club, there is nothing to gain here, except our personal knowledge or understanding of something
And so, on that note, you said how this is exactly how leftists shoot themselves in the foot with arguments like this, but like, who is trying to argue here? And for whom? As far as I can tell, you are the one trying to win some argument, I'm just trying to have a discussion about terms in a, presumably, left-leaning environment where we're all already roughly on the same page. From an external point of view, what people see is you mostly going off on others
When you say I'm chastising you, that's literally your imagination, it's not what I'm trying to do at all. So please don't put words in my mouth, okay?
The point others were trying to make, is that it's useful to talk about the working vs the owning class. And I further tried to get across that it's useful to have this sort of knowledge, and that using terms loosely isn't helpful for one's understanding of a topic. This is something that I speak from personal experience. It's basically just an argument for political literacy
But if I didn't get that across properly, then I apologize. I could have spent a bit more time explaining myself
Was going to bring up interest rates, but apparently a 30 year mortgage in 1960 was something like 7%. Which...isn't that bad.
Lyndon Johnson wanted to have a massive war in Vietnam without raising taxes, so he printed money to pay for it. Nixon doubled down on LBJ's plan. The OPEC oil embargo really made inflation soar. Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to run the Fed and bring it under control. Carter's plan worked, but only after Reagan won. Then Reagan turned around and started cutting taxes without a way to pay for the cuts.
In 1968 when Nixon came in, 'middle class' was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough left over for a few luxuries. By the time Bush Sr finished, 'middle class' was two incomes. In 1968 $1 million was a massive fortune; by 1993 it was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Mortgage rates were in the teens in the early 80s.
Yeah, that's why I brought it up. I always assumed they were high in the 60s too.
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.
"Adjusted for inflation" is a pretty silly term. It might mean something in an economics class, but it's nonsense if you try to apply it to the real world.
$1 million in 1960 would buy you an estate in Beverly Hills, a townhouse in Manhattan, a few luxury cars, and you'd have enough left over to invest and live comfortably forever.
$11 million today might get you a bungalow in a pricey neighborhood.
I don't see what's silly about it. It's the purchasing power that matters - not the numeric value.
That's exactly the point I was making.
So it makes sense to adjust prices for inflation because the numeric value itself doesn't illustrate the purchasing power accurately.
That’s exactly the point I was making.
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 rich 1% are the middle class. America discarded the hereditary upper class when we banned titles of nobility.
In our free society there are only two classes : those with enough money that they never have to work again, and those without.
no. they aren't.
i have family in the 1%. they think they are middle class, but nothing about them is middle class. their perception is deeply distorted.
the only reason they need to continue to work is that they massively over consume. they have 6 cars, boats, four properties, etc. if they cut that down to one modest house, modest travel, and dumped all the cars and boats etc, they could have retired 10 years ago in their 40s. there are 100s of articles about these types of people in major newspaper in magazines. how 'difficult' the life of multi millionaires int he upper west side is because this year they had to cut back on their 50K ski vacation to a 30K ski vacation. the 'struggle' it is to own 10 million in property and how they are terrified they might need to sell the vacation home they use 2 weeks year because it's not going up in value as fast as they want and the taxes went up.
but if you talk to them they think they are working class ordinary folks and all of this is entirely normal. and if you dare suggest it isn't they will tell you are a jealous asshole who is just lazy and hasn't worked hard like they did. they are also super mad right now that they have to pay full tuition to send their kids to college, they feel like they are being 'punished' my the schools because their children should go to free for being smarter and richer than other kids and the stupid poor kids should be the ones paying full tuition. they are being 'punished' for their success, and poor lazy people are being 'rewarded'. they absolutely are stoked at what Trump is doing with colleges and removing DEI and international students, because it means their kids have a better chance of getting into an elite school.
and all of their 1% friends are like this. most of their friends are actually WAY weather than they are. but if you go to a party with them all they will do nothing but go on and on about how poor and unfortunate they are because they can't afford condos in Hawaii or 100 ft yachts or how worried they are their kids might have to go to a public state school and not a ivy league school and what a horrible social embarrassment that would be for them because their friends/family will think they raised stupid shitty kids.
Wealth does messed up things to our brains.
Nobody wants to believe they're the "bad guys", or "privileged", or anything like that. So when you have more wealth than 99% of other people out there, you (consciously or subconsciously) come up with ways to justify it.
In this case, the multimillionaires believe they are the "normal", middle-of-the-road class, because they compare themselves against the ultra-rich. And anyone who has less than them must be lazy, or bad with money, or some other moral failing. Because if the millionaires aren't morally superior, the only other explanation is privilege or greed, and they can't live with that.
There are a handful of wealthy people who haven't succumbed to that as much. Dolly Parton is a great example--one article I read suggested she'd be one of the wealthiest people in the world if she weren't donating 90 to 95% of her income for most of her career. But when you have empathy and a lot of wealth, you end up with just a little wealth and a lot of grateful people.
Yeah thats the "middle class". They aren't part of the working class (serfs) but also arent the hereditary owners of counties (nobles.).
Rich fucks who have more money than anyone else and yet bitch about how hard they have it has literally always been what "middle class" means.
Washington and Jefferson was middle class. FDR and JFK were middle class. King George, Queen Elizabeth and King Charles are not