Speaking of North Dakota, in 2016 Tulsi Gabbard used to hang around with Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders types there lol

Your new Director of National Intelligence, ladies and gentlemen, whom Bernie assured us in 2019 was no Russian asset.

Donald Trump was just a working class stiff flipping hamburgers a few weeks ago, so Tulsi hanging with the left eight years ago is no big deal, right?

 

Kamala Harris should make up her mind already, oddly tells Latino audience all of a sudden that she comes from the working class and will not forget it

 Her PhD dad and PhD mom both had . . . jobs lol.

Link. 

Did Kamala forget that she's been touting herself repeatedly as middle class? 

 

 

 

 

The Latino woman says she herself is middle class and struggling, but Kamala in response clearly states she won't forget that she comes from the working class.

Does Kamala think all Latinos are working class?

This guy's just preoccupied with the shiny object Kamala is wearing and misses the Freudian slip:

The working class does not exist in the economic structure of a single nation

 

NeverTrump J. D. Vance in 2016 was a small sea of confusion whose options were his dog, Hillary, and Evan McMuffinhead lol

 

VANCE: My current plan is to vote either third party or, as I joked to my wife, I might write in my dog because that's about as good as it seems. But, you know, I think there's a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. But at the end of the day, I just feel like she is so culturally disconnected from the people that I grew up around that it would be very, very hard for me to cast my ballot for her. So ultimately I think I'll probably vote third party. I might vote for this new guy who I really like, Evan McMullin, who I actually met the other day. But I think that I'm going to vote third party because I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. And ultimately I just don't share Hillary Clinton's politics.

NPR. 

I would like the name of his dog NOW.

Platitudinous Glenn Loury thinks like a Marxist in his old age: Workers of all races have a common bond, he says

This kind of politics is universal.

The lapdogs lick it up here.

Glenn Loury last worked in a factory, when, in 1972? More than 12% of the civilian population had a manufacturing job back then. Today fewer than 5% have one. But in neither case was there anything universal about being working class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What have miners, sailors, tailors' apprentices, metalworkers, waiters, bank officials, ploughmen, and scavengers in common with one another?

-- Oswald Spengler

 

Beltway Republican David Winston for Roll Call wants 2016 to have been about the economy when it was about illegal immigration

 

This slight-of-hand reasoning is how Trump got co-opted by the GOP in 2017 in the first place, and it's how they're going to co-opt him again should he win. Beltway Republicans love, love, love immigration, so the top issue cannot, must not, be that.

 In 2016, the economy was the top issue, just as today . . ..

Here.

Trump's controversial 2015-2016 message was immigration, immigration, immigration for 14 straight months, until Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway got a hold of him in August 2016.

Trump barely won.

Trump's unfavorables were indeed high, but not because Hillary drove them there as Winston says. People forget that Trump did that all by himself. He ended up underperforming John McCain 2008 in 12 states and DC.

Trump was an insurgent candidate who exploited division within the GOP to capture the nomination. The 2016 primary popular vote for Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich exceeded Trump's 13.3 million.

That division has subsided, but it has never gone away, and Winston is one of the other side's smooth operators who still want to change the subject to anything else but the issue staring everyone in the face, from working class Americans now competing with 8 million new illegals for wages to upper class suburban denizens of Massachusetts being told to cope with hordes of new students in public schools they never designed to accommodate this flood.

That's the issue confronting voters, not Trump's Kangaroo Kourt Konviction, about which David wrings his hands.

If there's any vengeance in American politics about which we should be upset in 2024, Joe Biden's open southern border is surely it.

Back when I was in 'Nam working class people didn't go to college hehe

 

Biden On Debt Decision: Republicans "Couldn't Bear" Helping Working-Class

C'mon, man, The Wall Street Journal doesn't really believe "The Left Wins Big in Midwest"

First, Chicago.

Chicago is not the "Midwest".

Chicago remains firmly left-wing under new mayor Let's Go, Brandon Johnson.

It didn't just suddenly turn left this week.

The shit-hole will just get shittier under Johnson, instead of get slightly less shitty under Vallas.

As for Wisconsin, OK, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is now in the hands of four lunatic Democrat wymyn vs. three Republicans. Republican Dan Kelly was indeed resoundingly defeated, but by a nakedly partisan Democrat whose campaign may result in successful calls for her to recuse herself in certain future cases.

Abortion was indeed her campaign issue, but her main objective is rolling back former Governor Scott Walker's anti-government-union efforts.

But Kelly's defeat was a mixture of Republican stupidity combining with Democrat knavery.

Kelly was a Walker appointee, not a winner in his own right. He didn't win his seat in the first place, and he lost it in 2020. MAGA Republicans were STUPID to go with him a second time.

National Republicans: Note Well. Don't be STUPID in 2024 and go with an already defeated candidate.

And don't let Democrats select your candidate. Especially by putting him on trial.

The Wall Street Journal KNOWS Democrats spent $1 million to get the once-defeated Kelly nominated again in the primary instead of Jennifer Dorow, whose son became a political liability which unfortunately canceled her strong conservative record in the minds of enough voters.

Dorow, after all, had put away parade killer Darrell Brooks for life without parole. She is also allied with Chief Justice Clarence Thomas in her skepticism over Lawrence v Texas. But she gone.

Republicans in Missouri once let Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill select their candidate to run against her there. Now Republicans in Wisconsin have made the same stupid mistake and paid the same stupid price.

Meanwhile, Republicans more broadly in Wisconsin still firmly dominate its representation, the only state from Trump's 2016 Upper Midwest WI-MI-PA trifecta to do so.

They own the Assembly 64-35, and now the Senate 22-11. The GOP House delegation in Washington from Wisconsin is 6-2 Republican, the Senate 1-1. 

Wisconsin's GOP is hardly on the ropes, but the Wall Street Journal seems to think a Wisconsin Senate going Republican 21-12 because Mequon could have just as easily narrowly voted Democrat in a special election would have been a catastrophe.

Yes, Republicans nationally would be wise politically to stand for abortion compromise where abortion absolutism would result in defeat as in Michigan, but note that Michigan's Senate and House are still only narrowly Democrat, 20-18 and 56-54. Politics is the art of the possible, but bad candidates like the Dan Kellys and Donald Trumps of the world are no longer possible.

The Wall Street Journal should just say so.

The Midwest is not going left, just anti-Trump because he did not follow through on his promises to the working class, about which The Wall Street Journal cares nothing.

And by the way,  Democrats don't care either.

I hope Ohio's J. D. Vance is paying attention.

 

Phony Democrat SALT Caucus is out there today boasting it is going to vote for the Manchin bill anyway, which doesn't undo the Trump tax increases on the wealthy they promised to get rid of

State, local relief not in cards for residents of high-tax states as House assesses Inflation Reduction Act :

  a group of House Democrats say they will still vote for the party’s spending package without SALT reform . . . members of the SALT Caucus ... have vowed to oppose a bill without SALT relief

 

From their website:

SUOZZI,  GOTTHEIMER, YOUNG,  GARBARINO  ANNOUNCE  NEW  BIPARTISAN  SALT  CAUCUS  TO  FIGHT  FOR  TAX  RELIEF  FOR  MIDDLE  CLASS  FAMILIES

April 15, 2021  

Press Release 

32 Democrats and Republicans join

Today, April 15, 2021, Tom Suozzi (NY-3), U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5),  Young Kim (CA-39), and Andrew Garbarino (NY-2) announced the formation of the new bipartisan SALT Caucus to advocate for new tax relief from Congress. 

  

“Our effort to restore the SALT deduction is gaining momentum. Together, Democrats and Republicans alike, we will advocate for the restoration of the SALT deduction and highlight the middle class families who have been unfairly hurt by the cap,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “The cap on the SALT deduction has been a body blow to New York and middle-class families throughout the country. At the end of the day, we must fix this injustice.”

 

“We’re formally launching a new bipartisan group — the SALT Caucus — because, for all our Members, and for the tens of thousands of middle class families we represent, it is high time that Congress reinstates the State and Local Tax deduction, so we can get more dollars back in to the pockets of so many struggling families — especially as we recover from this pandemic,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “This bipartisan group we’re founding today, with members from coast to coast and across the political spectrum, are all banding together to reinstate the State and Local Tax deduction, to find a way to get this done in Congress, and to actually get tax relief for the hard working middle class families we represent.”

 

“Hardworking Californians in the 39th District and across my home state have been burdened enough by high state and local taxes. It is estimated that in the 2022 tax year, California’s 39th District will pay on average more than $640 million due to the SALT cap,” said Rep. Young Kim, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “I am proud to fight for lower taxes for my constituents as Co-Chair of the SALT Caucus and am looking forward to working together to ensure California workers and families can keep more of their hard-earned money.” 

 

“The SALT cap penalizes working class Long Islanders. From firefighters to police officers, to teachers, to nurses, and small business owners, I hear from people every day about what a crushing blow the SALT cap has delivered them. I’m proud to be a Co-Chair of the bipartisan SALT Caucus to fully restore the deduction once and for all,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, SALT Caucus Co-Chair.

 

“A critical component of our overall economic recovery must be the repeal of the state and local tax deduction cap that was imposed by the 2017 tax law,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill, SALT Caucus Vice Chair. “There is a misconception that the SALT deduction doesn’t help middle class families. But in high cost of living areas like my district, SALT does in fact make a critical difference in helping make ends meet for our middle class residents like teachers and law enforcement officers, who depend on this deduction to afford the high cost of living in our area. To be clear, the 2017 tax bill specifically targeted states and communities like mine that have prioritized key investments in our public schools, living wages for workers, environmental protections, the list goes on. I’m proud to be launching this bipartisan caucus to ensure we deliver a win on this issue for families in New Jersey and across the country.”

 

“The cap on the state and local tax deduction hurts middle class California families,” said Rep. Katie Porter, SALT Caucus Vice Chair. “During the coronavirus pandemic, our state and local governments have led public health efforts on testing and vaccines—a potent reminder of the important work they do. Restoring the state and local tax deduction, which has been in our tax code since its inception, gives taxpayers and communities the ability to invest in their priorities and levels the playing field across states for federal taxation.”

 

“Counties are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting nearly 1,000 hospitals, more than 1,900 public health authorities and other services essential to residents’ safety and well-being. The human and financial impacts of addressing this health and economic emergency are staggering,” said National Association of Counties Executive Director Matthew Chase. “We applaud the formation of this bipartisan caucus committed to repealing the state and local tax deduction cap, which would reinstate our local control of our tax systems and strengthen the ability of our counties and local communities to deliver essential public services, such as emergency response, public health and infrastructure.”

 

The SALT Caucus leadership consists of: 

 

Co-Chair Tom Suozzi (NY-3)

Co-Chair Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5)

Co-Chair Andrew Garbarino (NY-2)

Co-Chair Young Kim (CA-39)

Bill Pascrell, Jr. (NJ-9), SALT Caucus Vice Chair  

Katie Porter (CA-45), SALT Caucus Vice Chair

Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), SALT Caucus Vice Chair

Jamie Raskin (MD-08), SALT Caucus Vice Chair

Chris Smith (NJ-04), SALT Caucus Vice Chair

Lauren Underwood (IL-14), SALT Caucus Vice Chair

 

The other founding members of the SALT Caucus include: Reps. Danny Davis, Nicole Malliotakis, Julia Brownley, Judy Chu, Lee Zeldin, Michelle Steel, Mike Levin, Jimmy Panetta, Jimmy Gomez, Brian Higgins, Jerry Nadler, Tom Malinowski, Jeff Van Drew, Alan Lowenthal, Anna Eshoo, Andy Kim, Ted Lieu, Brad Schneider, John Larson, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Mike Garcia, and Gregory Meeks.

 

Donald Trump, president of the working class

 

LOL, according to this stupid definition by a university pinhead, there are only 23.8 million middle class workers

“If you are holding a position that is non-managerial, non-executive level, doesn’t have a lot of decision power, you would have been classified in our study as working class,” Addo says [here].

In February 2022 there were 128.2 million total private employees. 104.4 million of them were "production and nonsupervisory".

 

That's a ratio of workers to supervisors of about 4.4:1 in the private sector. In the federal government, the ratio's much worse, somewhere between 7-10:1. That's probably closer to the truth also for the entire government sector,  which is 22.2  million strong.

 

The supervisors are the elite minority, hello. 

The best proxy for middle class has always been homeownership: house, condo, whatever. It's one of the most basic things which has defined us and more importantly united us for generations. There was a time when everyone said, rich and poor alike, that they were middle class, it was that strong of an American ideal. 

Now we're stuck with a bunch of eggheads trying to divide us by overthrowing definitions.

Total households in 2020 numbered about 128.5 million in the United States. Roughly 84 million were owner occupied at the time, 42 million renter occupied, a ratio of 2:1.

 

The average size of a household in 2020 was about 2.53: (84 + 42) 2.53 = 319 million (a relatively small additional number of Americans lives in subsidized housing, military housing, and institutionalized housing).

A broad swath of Americans, 66%, lives in an owned home, with about a third distributed at the top and the bottom renting out of either convenience or necessity.

 

And most of them are by definition nonsupervisory employees.

Green New Deal in the hands of Democrats is a dagger aimed at the heart of the middle class

 Joel Kotkin here in The New York Post:

If these Democrats win both houses of Congress as well as the White House, things could get far worse for the already beleaguered middle class, which has been rocked by the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 small firms going out of business. Particularly hard-hit by the recent urban unrest are inner city and minority businesses. ...

If the Democrats win on Election Day, the future for the middle class could be bleak. As a lifelong Democrat, this is not easy to write, but most of the party’s initiatives — such as the Green New Deal — are directly harmful to those in the middle and working classes, who’d be forced to face increased housing and energy prices and fewer upwardly mobile jobs in industries like manufacturing.

Washington Examiner lists Pocahonky's identity lies, starting with, well, Pocahonky

Here:

It's common knowledge by now that Warren, one of the top four 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, identified as a Native American, despite being somewhere between 0.1% and 3% Native American . . ..

[T]he senator also fibbed when she promised to serve her full Senate term if reelected in 2018. Her 2020 presidential run began a few weeks after she won that election.

Warren has emphasized again and again that her children attended public schools. Her storyline here suffers from a material omission: Her kids also attended private schools. Perhaps this particular misdirection stems from the fact that she’s campaigning against the school choice programs . . ..

Warren’s brother told the Boston Globe, “My dad was never a janitor," and he said it makes him “furious” that Warren has repeatedly claimed otherwise on the campaign trail.

Warren must know that her own background, as a millionaire whose children attended private school, doesn’t fit easily with her soak-the-rich rhetoric.

Commentators often lump Warren's run in with that of Bernie Sanders. But Sanders's base comes from the young and the working class, while Warren's base is mostly highly educated baby boomers who surely feel a warm glow from the belief they are part of some populist uprising.

Biden in the cat bird seat: Just as Bernie tanked after promising criminals will get to vote, Warren has tanked after hedging on Medicare for all

Ezra Klein, here:

One lesson of the past few weeks is that the Medicare-for-all debate has become a minefield for Democrats — and it’s not clear that any candidate has a safe path through it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has dropped 14 points since October 8, when she briefly led the Democratic field in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Most attribute her decline to her handling of Medicare-for-all — the financing plan she released made her the target of attacks from the moderates, and then the transition plan she released, which envisions a robust public option in the first year of her presidency and only moving to Medicare-for-all in year three, left single-payer advocates unnerved about her commitment to the cause.

The Democrat left has been its own worst enemy.

In addition to alienating working people by going soft on crime, the people who bear the brunt of it,  Bernie has notably lost ground with the working class by flipping on immigration restriction. Every new immigrant drives down their wages when immigrants are not taking their jobs outright.

For her part, on top of hedging on Medicare for all, Warren has rolled out a veritable cornucopia of crazy in this campaign, including a ban on all fracking in the US and ending the Electoral College. Combined with the recent lying about the little details of her life, voters justifiably doubt her sincerity on these larger issues and suspect that she cares about little except getting the power into her hands.

Hence the default candidate still on top, Joe Biden.

America's political institutions are still so structured that even when radicals like Obama do win, those institutions frustrate their aims. The upside of this is that harmful radicalism is usually stopped in its tracks. The downside is that mediocrities and grotesques are produced.

Just as Obama was content to let his Clinton retreads handle the Great Financial Crisis resulting in the still poor full time employment, moribund GDP, unaffordable housing and low interest rates catastrophic to income portfolios of the present time, Obama provided zero leadership on healthcare reform. This resulted in the competing Democrat House and Senate versions which consumed his first year in office, and eventually produced the Affordable Care Act camel, a horse designed by a committee. He sure did enjoy watching basketball in the private residence, though, and went on to make the Bush tax cuts permanent after winning re-election in 2012. Some radical, huh?

The same thing has happened with Trump. Although promising us the moon about immigration, healthcare reform and foreign wars, he instead delivered tax reform mostly for the corporations and huge spending increases for the military industrial complex, which is the basic consensus of the Republican caucus in Congress, foolishly hoping that they would give him a little somethin' somethin' in return.

Nothing doing. Even trade realignment will disappear when Trump does.

Trump's problem is that he never had a political faction holding any seats in Congress to drive his agenda. He just assumed the existing members would adopt his positions, which is pretty damn naive considering how he attacked and alienated them all throughout 2015-2016. Instead, Trump has steadily moved away from his own positions and adopted theirs, for his own political survival.

Trump's porous bollard fencing instead of the real wall he promised is simply the most public symbol of this, going back as it does to the George W. Bush administration.

The only radical realignment we have seen is the realignment of the radicals with their respective parties, and Election 2020 will be the same old, same old fight between them.

Those who won't realign get discarded.

This is the tyranny of the legislative. And the only way to remedy this is to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, the great mistake of 1951. Only the threat of a Trump or an Obama perpetually in the White House will restore the balance of power between the three branches of government and advance the interests of the people who vote for the president.

As things stand, the best we can hope for is a president desperately stacking the courts to increase his power in a tyranny of the judiciary, which is hardly the remedy intended by the founders and is unacceptable to Americans loyal to the constitution and the nation as founded. The three stooges of the law schools on display at the impeachment hearing yesterday are proof enough of that. 

Communist Jews (aka Antifa) are mobilized on behalf of open borders and illegal aliens like never before

No borders, no wall, no USA at all.

JEWISH CURRENTS: July 15, 2019 Posted by Greg Afinogenov [teaches at Georgetown!]

The Jewish Case for Open Borders:

The fact that American Jews are mobilized on behalf of migrants like never before is an important step in the right direction. ...

[I]s there such a thing as a border that is both strong and just? The historical record and present-day realities suggest that there is not, and that what we need is not immigration reform, but open borders. ...

[C]enter-left immigration arguments—which on the surface appear compatible with the pro-migrant politics of progressive Jews—rest on the same foundation as those made by the right. ...

Obama and Clinton permitted most of the same abuses as Trump, if not with the same overtly racist glee. ...

The borders between Israel and Palestine exist definitively for the have-nots, not the haves; ...

[A]n open-borders perspective is not just a tactical intervention in a debate about immigration, it is a new vision of a more just society. ...

[W]e should look to the radical alternatives that large numbers of Jews once supported in Europe and in immigrant communities across the world. ...

Jewish activists in the anarchist and internationalist socialist tradition argued that the answer was not to build a Jewish state, but to seek Jewish emancipation as part of a broader anti-capitalist movement. ...

The vast majority of Jews had more in common with Latvian, German, or Russian workers than they did with the few wealthy and powerful members of their own community, and Jews joined revolutionary socialist parties in the Russian Empire in disproportionate numbers. Even in a specifically Jewish socialist party like the Jewish Labor Bund, nationalism was anathema. ...

Many of these Jewish radicals, whether anarchists, communists, or socialists, retained their loyalty to the international working class when they immigrated to the United States. ...

Jewish immigrants came together with other foreign-born groups in organizations like the Industrial Workers of the World, helping to create one of the cornerstones of the American left. These left-wing Jews were among the earliest targets of the first Red Scare that followed the Russian Revolution. Woodrow Wilson’s Palmer Raids swept across the country, deporting immigrants who refused to abandon solidarity and internationalism in their new country. ...

The way out of the nationalist trap in which Jews have been caught since World War II goes through Jewish cosmopolitanism, but not in the form that antisemites have imagined. The idea that Jews are more loyal to Jews in other countries than to their fellow citizens should be replaced . . ..   

Joe "Middle Class" Biden edging AWAY from the working class because he's gotten rich: He used to be "Lunchbox Joe", but POLITICO seems to know nothing about it

‘Middle-Class Joe’ rakes in millions POLITICO 3/18/19:

He’s repeatedly referred to himself as “Middle-Class Joe” on the campaign trail and in speaking engagements as he publicly mulls whether to run for president. ... “I know I’m called Middle-Class Joe. It’s not meant to be a compliment. It means I’m not sophisticated. But I know what made this country what it is: ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Biden said in Kentucky last year, a refrain he’s used repeatedly for years, including when he floated a potential presidential run in 2017.

5 things Biden pick says about Obama POLITICO 8/23/08:

4. He’s more worried about Lunchbox Joe than Bubba. Obama was not persuaded by arguments that Democrats for the past 60 years have won the presidency only when they've had a Southerner on the ticket. He seems confident he can put a few states in the Old Confederacy in play by stoking African-American turnout. Perhaps. But he also is calculating that his more urgent concern is working-class whites, especially those in the industrial Midwest. Hillary Rodham Clinton clobbered him in these areas — and white men remain very skeptical of him, if you believe the polls (and his people do). At the public unveiling of the ticket Saturday at Springfield, Ill., Obama called Biden a “scrappy kid from Scranton.” 

The word 'worker' has been surrounded by a halo since 1848

"The working class does not exist in the economic structure of a single nation. ... What have miners, sailors, tailors' apprentices, metalworkers, waiters, bank officials, ploughmen, and scavengers in common with one another?"

-- Oswald Spengler

Like just about everyone else on the left, Joel Kotkin continues to twist himself in pretzels to avoid calling our system what it already is

State capitalism.

It is the socialism of the right, despite what names people may give it. The fascist model in which business and government cooperate now more, now less was not defeated in World War II. The superior American version simply defeated the German one, and eventually also the left's inherently weaker version in Russia.

It has triumphed globally, brought to the fore in America by the libertarian resurgence under Ronald Reagan, imitated by the jealous Euro project, and notably exported to China, where it was eagerly embraced as no threat to Marxism. To the genuine Marxist, remember, free-trade is welcome because it hastens the global revolution. Belt and Road participants, take note.

The experiential groundwork for global state capitalism was laid long ago by the King and Bank of England in their joint enterprise known as the Thirteen Colonies. Everyone imitates this now in principle if not always in particulars. But everywhere it flourishes it is facilitated by the same thing, the central banking systems which coordinate their activities through rules administered under Basel III. The contemporary exemplars of state capitalism fancy that they are substantively a world away from Hitler's Germany, because, well, the Jews. We don't kill Jews, insist these experts at mass abortion and Uyghur mass re-education. 

It's the historical resonances which bother the left in using the phrase, but the underlying facts aren't different in substance. Materialism today means not having to say you're sorry for treating people like depreciated or unappreciated assets. Older workers in the West are routinely tossed aside for being too costly. Potential younger competitors are hamstrung by a culture of costly credentialing prerequisites. When such people become worthless enough, it isn't unlikely that in some places they could stop being considered people altogether (typically where atheism reigns) so that they could be slaughtered wholesale with the same relative efficiency already applied to the unborn. The tech already exists to do this. The only question is when will the people exist who are possessed of enough nerve.   

Here's Kotkin on this so-called "new, innovative approach" which looks like nothing so much as the old Soviet Union, with its hostility centered on the middle class, its dreary blocks of drab apartment buildings, the dim pall of surveillance and conformity lurking everywhere, complete with its own privileged new class in service to the party .01 percent:

Oligarchal socialism allows for the current, ever-growing concentration of wealth and power in a few hands — notably tech and financial moguls — while seeking ways to ameliorate the reality of growing poverty, slowing social mobility and indebtedness. This will be achieved not by breaking up or targeting the oligarchs, which they would fight to the bitter end, but through the massive increase in state taxpayer support. ... [T]he tech oligarchy — the people who run the five most capitalized firms on Wall Street — have [sic] a far less egalitarian vision. ... [T]hey see government spending as a means of keeping the populist pitchforks away. ... Handouts, including housing subsidies, could guarantee for the next generation a future not of owned houses, but rented small, modest apartments. ...  They appeal to progressives by advocating politically correct views . . .. Faced with limited future prospects, more millennials already prefer socialism to capitalism and generally renounce constitutionally sanctioned free speech . . .. [I]ncreased income guarantees, nationalized health care, housing subsidies, rent control and free education could also help firms maintain a gig-oriented [slave] economy since these employers do not provide the basic benefits often offered by more traditional “evil” corporations . . ..  [T]he oligarchy, representing basically the top .01 percent of the population, are primarily interested not in lower taxes but in protecting their market shares and capital. ... The losers here will be our once-protean middle class. Unlike the owners of corporations in the past, oligarchs have no interest in their workers become homeowners or moving up the class ladder. Their agenda instead is forever-denser, super-expensive rental housing for their primarily young, and often short-term, employees. ... The tech moguls get to remain wealthy beyond the most extreme dreams of avarice, while their allies in progressive circles and the media, which they increasingly own, continue to hector everyone else about giving up their own aspirations. All the middle and upwardly mobile working class gets is the right to pay ever more taxes, while they watch many of their children devolve into serfs, dependent on alms and subsidies for their survival.

A materialist imagines that for the first time in history we are free

Wow, while I wasn't looking utopia suddenly arrived. Reminds me of nothing so much as Millerism.

It never occurs to this guy that "the end of the working class" can mean only one thing. The middle class replaces the old working class and becomes the new working class. And that won't be good for your bank account.

Here:

We can hope for something better because, for the first time in history, we are free to choose something better. The low productivity of traditional agriculture meant that mass oppression was unavoidable; the social surplus was so meager that the fruits of civilization were available only to a tiny elite, and the specter of Malthusian catastrophe was never far from view. Once the possibilities of a productivity revolution through energy-intensive mass production were glimpsed, the creation of urban proletariats in one country after another was likewise driven by historical necessity. The economic incentives for industrializing were obvious and powerful, but the political incentives were truly decisive. When military might hinged on industrial success, geopolitical competition ensured that mass mobilizations of working classes would ensue.

White working class is lazy says the guy who's bustin' the buttons on his shirt

Bill Kristol, here:

Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol said Tuesday afternoon that the white working class should be replaced by immigrants as they have become “decadent, lazy” and “spoiled.”