Undertanding: Plutocracy, The Salariat, and The Precariat
Posted by chota-kaka@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 19 comments
Modern societies are increasingly divided into three broad groups: the plutocracy, the salariat, and the precariat.
The plutocracy consists of the wealthy elite (The 1%, The billionaires etc, take you pick) who control a disproportionate share of economic resources, investments, and political influence.
The salariat includes professionals, managers, and skilled workers who enjoy stable employment, benefits, and relative economic security.
The third group, the precariat, is made up of people living with insecure jobs, temporary contracts, low wages, many times multiple low paying jobs, and uncertain futures.
Problems emerge when the gap between these groups becomes too wide. As wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a small plutocracy, many people (in the other groups) begin to feel excluded from economic progress. The salariat may initially remain stable, but rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education gradually erodes their security. Meanwhile, the precariat often experiences chronic financial stress and limited opportunities for advancement.
A society where large numbers of people believe the system no longer works for them become politically and socially unstable.
When the trust in institutions declines, social cohesion weakens, and support for radical political movements grows, it leads to further economic inequality, declining social mobility, and extreme insecurity. These divisions contribute to social unrest, political polarization, and ultimately, the collapse of the social order itself.
Comfortable-Art-9734@reddit
Texto 100% IA, segundo https://www.pangram.com/
RoyalZeal@reddit
I prefer the original names for those groups - the bourgeoisie, the petit bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Straight-Razor666@reddit
\^ very much this \^
methadoneclinicynic@reddit
Well "petite bourgeoisie" usually refers to small business owners, but you could say the managing class "owns" their own knowledge property or something. yeah there's a lot of ways of describing the 1% elite/rich/ruling class, 20% pmc/managing class, 80% working class. I think that ratio has help up throughout a lot of history.
Also precariat is usually used to distiguish unsteady shitty employment from the proletariat's steady shitty employment. The problem with just using the old bourgeoisie, petit bourrgeoisie and proletariat is that academics have lost the battle in the real world, so all they have is language wars. Thus they need to come up with new terms every once in a while to seem relevant.
Ok_Main3273@reddit
Wasn't it phrased this way originally: the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?
Straight-Razor666@reddit
America is a plutocracy, purpose built to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie in order to increase their wealth and power at the expense and subjugation of the masses. It has never served the interests of working people. Genocide and slavery were the means by which this nation began. It remains functionally the same to this day.
Disabuse yourself of american exceptionalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkyEzlarues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yypklblxiMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONiAfIC90uc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5P6vJs1jmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIKSlNG89-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbLVMrEa0iA
Few_Fish8771@reddit
Americas heading for a warlord era, think northern mexico or the middle east or east africa. in such systems money is not power, violence is. The power people have depends on how much violence they can do, how much disruption to the wealthy the powerful and the state they can cause, the ability to capture wealthy people to extract value, and most importantly, their legitimacy among the lower classes, who they redistribute wealth too, and protect from both the wealthy and the state.
In such societies financialization and rent seeking become much much harder as you cannot depend on enforcement by the state of property rights, raising the risk and thereby making financialization much much harder.
When the social contract breaks down and the state is unwilling or unable to redress the grievances of the population, organized crime fills the void.
FDRs new deal was constructed to reverse and stop this.
TanteJu5@reddit
The Mexican cartels generally don't seek to entirely replace the state rather they operate in its shadows, corrupting it to create permissive environments for profit. A regression to a warlord era across the Americas doesn't take into account the resilience of corporations and state power structures which are more likely to militarize the police or employ private security i.e., a localized neo-feudalism than simply collapse into total chaos.
FDR’s policies were designed to save capitalism from systemic collapse and to prevent the mass radicalization of the American public toward communism or fascism.
Few_Fish8771@reddit
In the 1930s the state the ruling class did try variations of fascism. The labor unions were getting extrajudiciously killed by the police. So the labor unions made a deal with organized crime. Organize crime delivered. They outgunned and outmurdered the police the oligarchs everybody. They had the backing of much of the working class. If FDR had not had the new deal either warlords and organized crime would have ruled, or the usa might have gone communist. Stalin was a mobster before he was a communist.
I dont want to go into the logic of why warlords would win other than its easy to burn stuff down and very expensive to defend it or build it. Evidence the war in ukraine ukraine is winning. Also basic cost accounting and analysis.
TanteJu5@reddit
Organized crime infiltrated unions like the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association to exploit them for profit through racketeering, embezzlement and extortion. Yes, the mob was violently effective but they never posed a military threat capable of toppling the government or defeating the military.
Stalin did organize bank robberies, kidnappings and extortion rings but he did this as a committed Bolshevik to fund Lenin's faction. He wasn't a thug who later discovered communism.
Ukraine uses conventional military backed by the intelligence apparatus and industrial supply chains of NATO. I don't know from where you've got that decentralized band of warlords.
Few_Fish8771@reddit
1 Organized crime is bad. Warlords are bad. Not advocating for warlordism just saying its a probably outcome.
I believe stalin was into doing criminal stuff before communism. I could be wrong. The point I was making is criminal elements can pivot very easily into becoming political elements.
The point with Ukraine is their military strategy is a very sophisticated drone lead arsonist strategy, in essence setting very flammable things on fire using drones. Its the arsonist strategy with drones as the delivery mechanism.
Its a strategy anyone can use and I am not really interested on expanding on that because I dont want to give bad people ideas.
ISuckAtJavaScript12@reddit
I believe making a distinction between the Salariat and Precariat only helps divide the working class even further, which would only benefit the plutocracy. As far as I'm concerned of you trade your labour for money you're a part of the working class. I doubt the owner class makes much distinction between a salaried worker or someone working at a gas station when it comes to what policies they lobby for. The only use I can think of for the distinction is that it's more likely members of the Salariat would support the current system, however based on solely anecdotal evidence i believe that support is shrinking
iStoleTheHobo@reddit
It also mixes material analysis with psychobabble which contrary to better analysis with better predictive ability sets the fundamental fact of ownership's introduction of wildly differing incentive structure in favor of focusing in on how it's scary to witness the desperation born from material precarity as it produces incentives which run counter to the economic system which deprives them of conditions necessary for material and social needs of the emisserated working class as they're left to attempt to find some altrnative to the enshrined political project which sprung up in order to protect interests of the hyper minoritarian owner class from the ones they exploit due to lack of ownership of any productive capital save for their bodies.
TanteJu5@reddit
The salariat is currently experiencing downward mobility as many white collar workers are facing mass layoffs, the erosion of their purchasing power through inflation and the realization that their degrees no longer guarantee a safety net. They are for the 1st tine beginning to feel the precarity that service workers have known for decades. Building a coalition against a plutocracy requires the newly insecure salariat to recognize how much further the precariat has already fallen.
chota-kaka@reddit (OP)
These groups were defined by British Economist Guy Standing. He wrote several books and papers on this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Standing_(economist)
NyriasNeo@reddit
"A society where large numbers of people believe the system no longer works for them become politically and socially unstable."
More accurately, a society where large number of people are willing to do something to change the system become politically and socially unstable. Just talk, like ranting on reddit, I would argue is still stable. In fact, ranting online provides a pressure release valve.
I would further argue that the top will just pay off the bottom enough so that the system is stable. People do not revolt or do drastic things if they have something to lose .. even if that is just a rental home and enough food stamp to get buy, and can slurge a little once in a while. And all that is pretty cheap to those at the top.
One more correction, what you call the "salariat" should include those who have enough assets and do not really need the stable job. After all, there are 24M millionaires in the US. While $1M is not enough to comfortably retire on, it provides a lot of stability. So it is more like the "salary and asset class". No where close to the elites at the top, but have no financial stress and also not anywhere close to those at the bottom.
We are already in a k-shape economy. It is just going to be more extreme.
chota-kaka@reddit (OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Standing_(economist)
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chota-kaka:
Submission Statement:
Modern societies are increasingly divided into three broad groups: the plutocracy, the salariat, and the precariat.
The plutocracy consists of the wealthy elite (The 1%, The billionaires etc, take you pick) who control a disproportionate share of economic resources, investments, and political influence.
The salariat includes professionals, managers, and skilled workers who enjoy stable employment, benefits, and relative economic security.
The third group, the precariat, is made up of people living with insecure jobs, temporary contracts, low wages, many times multiple low paying jobs, and uncertain futures.
Problems emerge when the gap between these groups becomes too wide. As wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a small plutocracy, many people (in the other groups) begin to feel excluded from economic progress. The salariat may initially remain stable, but rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education gradually erodes their security. Meanwhile, the precariat often experiences chronic financial stress and limited opportunities for advancement.
A society where large numbers of people believe the system no longer works for them become politically and socially unstable.
When the trust in institutions declines, social cohesion weakens, and support for radical political movements grows, it leads to further economic inequality, declining social mobility, and extreme insecurity. These divisions contribute to social unrest, political polarization, and ultimately, the collapse of the social order itself.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ttbr5m/undertanding_plutocracy_the_salariat_and_the/op1d9cw/
chota-kaka@reddit (OP)
Submission Statement:
Modern societies are increasingly divided into three broad groups: the plutocracy, the salariat, and the precariat.
The plutocracy consists of the wealthy elite (The 1%, The billionaires etc, take you pick) who control a disproportionate share of economic resources, investments, and political influence.
The salariat includes professionals, managers, and skilled workers who enjoy stable employment, benefits, and relative economic security.
The third group, the precariat, is made up of people living with insecure jobs, temporary contracts, low wages, many times multiple low paying jobs, and uncertain futures.
Problems emerge when the gap between these groups becomes too wide. As wealth and power concentrate in the hands of a small plutocracy, many people (in the other groups) begin to feel excluded from economic progress. The salariat may initially remain stable, but rising costs of housing, healthcare, and education gradually erodes their security. Meanwhile, the precariat often experiences chronic financial stress and limited opportunities for advancement.
A society where large numbers of people believe the system no longer works for them become politically and socially unstable.
When the trust in institutions declines, social cohesion weakens, and support for radical political movements grows, it leads to further economic inequality, declining social mobility, and extreme insecurity. These divisions contribute to social unrest, political polarization, and ultimately, the collapse of the social order itself.