Hi Roger,
Point well taken.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2016 9:25 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: what is the working class?
Well, on one hand you say that defining what is the working class will not
be easy and then you go on to show that it is a lot easier than you make it
out to be. It has nothing to do with making under a certain income. It does
not even have to do with physical labor , per se, whether the income from
that labor is high or low. It simply has to do with this. Do you apply labor
to raw materials or partially processed materials and increase its value by
doing so? If you do that then you are working. Do you simply own and derive
your income from the labor of others who toil in your factories? If you do
you are not working. You are exploiting. Do you make a living as a cashier
or bank teller or some other such job where you shuffle money for the
bosses? If you do you may not be directly producing wealth, but you are
engaged in increasing the wealth of the boss class and are being exploited
because your recompense is less than the wealth you provide for the bosses
and so you are working. The concept of class is categorical. If you
recognize that the economic role of those who accumulate wealth while doing
no labor is different than the role of those who do labor and accumulate
very little wealth then you are recognizing classes and it should be pretty
obvious who belong in the working class and who belongs in the exploiting
class.
In fact, the difference is so glaringly obvious that I wouldn't say at all
that it is hard to define what the working class is.
On 8/27/2016 10:02 AM, Bob Hachey wrote:
Hi all,
No doubt, trying to define what is the working class is not going to
be easy. One could argue that it means earning less than a certain
income, let's say $40,000.00. The flaw there is that one could be
earning such income from investments and not working at all. Also,
picking a number for the income is problematic at best.
Others might say that it means doing some sort of physical labor. But
some folks like plumbers and electricians earn a pretty good living
doing physical labor.
Still others might argue that it is based on one's education level.
But we all know folks who are relatively well educated who don't make
much money and we know other less educated types who earn more money.
By the way, I hesitate to use the word earn because it implies that
all who get money deserve what they get and that is certainly not true
in these days of injustice and tremendous income inequality.
Perhaps the best way to look at this is to take the approach that
former SCOTUS justice Potter took in trying to define what is
obscenity. He said that he couldn't define it specifically but that he
knew what it was when he saw it.
Bob Hachey
