Re: <nettime> 99%? 66% is more like it

[Rebecca Zorach <rezorach@gmail.com>]

What reality is this 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3 analysis based on? I am sure I
am a particularly radicalized member of that top 33% (my household
income places me at the 83rd percentile of American households) but
I would think part of the point is that people like me, who are the
ones you'd think this capitalist system would be working for, are
still struggling. I don't own a car (much less an SUV) because I
can't afford one, we have a mountain of student debt, our mortgage
on a modest condo is underwater, we rarely eat out, I only travel
when my employer pays for it, the bureaucracies I deal with (public
and private) are increasingly rapacious and useless, I have family
members on minimum wage jobs or jobless with no health care and no
prospects. Sure I am privileged and have many many comforts other
people don't, but there is no comparison between my life and that of
the 1%. I meet some of them through my work, and they look at me like
I'm a bug. If the wealth in the US were evenly distributed, I would
have approximately the same as what I have now. Obviously that's not
true if you look worldwide- but I know to throw my lot in with the
66% (or whatever that bottom percentage is) even if it means making
sacrifices.

I'm not complaining about my own situation?I just think it illustrates
the fact that there are plenty of people in the "33%" who subjectively
feel they are not doing well *at all*. Who might come to understand
especially well that if the current capitalist system does not seem
to working for * them*, for whom it is supposedly working, maybe the
system itself?and not just their place within it, or within some
fantasy created by it?is the problem.




On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>wrote:

> On 02.11.2011 19:56, Felix Stalder wrote:
>
>  My impression is that the wide popularity of these movements is based on
>> common desire to return the system to what is perceived it's "normal
>> state", i.e. the American dream in the US, some sort of welfare state in
>> the EU. While they are clearly more radical elements in it, I don't think
>> at this stage, they are widely supported.
>>
>
> Hey Felix, Alex, I feel there is one kernel of radicalism that I think is
> currently widespread, perhaps even held by the majority, and that is that
>  healthcare, education, child care and housing are not provisioned well by
> the market system.

<...>






#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org