You’ll see in a minute why this will matter massively to your future, but there used to be four classes of Americans:
The upper class
The middle class
The working class
The poor
Today, there are five classes:
Billionaire elites
Predators (people who get their income from hoarded wealth instead of contributed work)
The (fake) middle class
The working poor (working three gig jobs to pay rent and interest)
The absolute poor (homeless)
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 was murdered by the rich.
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.
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 and totally screwed.
Hundreds of millions would be revealed for what they actually are — working poor or absolute poor.
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’re a member of the parasite class that lives off the work of others by hoarding shares, bonds, and rental properties.)
There are almost zero non-predators under the age of forty who can genuinely call themselves members of the former 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.
Why this should matter to you
Because the corporatist bankers who own our government aren’t going to stop printing money out of thin air…
Which will continue inflating the money supply and cause more price inflation…
Which banksters will then counteract with higher interest rates…
Which will give them more of a capital basis to print more money…
As interest rates stay higher for longer and go higher, and real inflation continues to erode purchasing power, more people will drop out of the fake middle class into the working poor and absolute poor.
We’re talking tens of millions of people in our lifetime.
People you know.
Friends.
Family.
People reading these words right now.
Quietly, friends will fade away as they retreat into lives of permanent and perpetual working poverty.
How many friends have already slowly dropped out of contact as they silently slip into societal shame and struggle?
In conclusion
You are not middle-class if you can’t survive a 10% spike in interest rates.
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 a guaranteed pension.
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.
It’s time for our society to give up its delusions and know its true place.
We aren’t middle class.
We’re the working poor, slaving our lives away to enrich the richest people in human history.
Their plan for our lives: 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 blaming debtors instead of creditors. Keep opposing debt cancellations and banning interest and taxing for-profit land-lording out of existence and land rights for all.
Above all, never meaningfully resist part of their plan, because we know best.
We’re “middle class,” after all.
Just five weeks left to pre-order my new book on the devil!