Have seen it pointed out that this level of disillusionment is a ripe moment for further radicalization that white supremacist groups are likely to try to exploit. So if you have any wobbling QAnoners in your life, it might be worth reaching out to let them know they’re not completely alone and (even if you don’t particularly like them) that they can find camaraderie elsewhere than white supremacists.
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I think “afford” is part of the problem. I could afford the monthly, but with the overall cost and the interest on terms like that it seems like a losing proposition in any reasonable way. I’m slightly annoyed at the terms we are paying for our Subaru for Mrs Peas to establish credit. The APR is good-to-low and the price was fine, but with 60 month terms, I’m still bothered by how much cash we’ll end up throwing away just for the benefit of getting on the credit hamster wheel.
I also come from a cash-only family who bought cars outright. They’re almost always used, but annual repair and maintenance costs dwarf monthly payments by a mile. The previous generation would drop cash on a brand-new Buick and drive it off the lot not owing a penny. They lived like paupers, but had zero debt and drove those cars until they or the car died. I can’t necessarily recommend it in modern times, but owning your assets outright is a pretty good way to be.
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This part I find hard to agree with; my mom was a contractor growing up and I knew many others, and there’s a huge spectrum of success with contractors - many of them are bringing in pretty low wages on inconsistent paydays, and none of the ones I knew growing up could be considered upper class at all - at best, middle class.
Yeah, there’s a lot of 50k truck driving bigtime contractors that have built up a solid line of business and are raking in the cash, but I think the idea that the job as a ‘group’ is ‘most likely’ upper class is crazy to me, at least from any of my personal experience, especially if you’re lumping independent or smaller contractors in there.
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The one’s driving 50,000 trucks are not working class. Owning the means of production takes you out of the working class.
Are all equally successful? Of course not, but if I need to explicate every single exception to the rule, then we’re no longer having a conversation, are we?
Your personal experience is just that, though. It’s not wrong, it’s just not the whole of the thing.
Owning a business is not a “job” in the sense of being working class. You need at least some means to be able to start a business, some kind of access to capital, even some cultural capital at least, to be able to secure loans, even often modest ones.
And depending on when and where you grew up, success might have meant very different things then they do today. Banking was different, meaning access to capital for the white upper working class was far easier than it is today.
Plenty of people who are wealthy are very fond of throwing around that terminology to describe themselves, despite actually being far wealthier than the majority of Americans. 
[eta: grammar edits]
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I bought my car new, outright, no loan. I am going to drive that damn thing until the wheels come off.
Then I will get them reattached and rinse and repeat. It’s a diesel, so there’s a decent chance the engine makes it to 300k miles.
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I think part of the issue may be the intentionally confusing semantics on the part of some employers; I’ve worked many a job where I was classified as an ‘independent contractor’ in order for the company to avoid paying me their standard company benefits, like health insurance.
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The problem of course, is that many people can’t afford to buy a car new (or even gently used like from a Carmax) outright. Those of us who can afford to do so are very lucky… for most people, though…
There is this too! Our general cultural language is muddled, in part.
But in this case, I’m talking about a specific type of business owner who work in a specific trade/set of trades, which is one of the best compensated of various blue collar labor. The trades pay relatively well, up and down the scale, and many contractors manage to build quite a lucrative business over the years.
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Or worker’s comp, disability and unemployment insurance. It’s why I’m planning to return to employee status in the next few months. I’m sick of being jerked around so someone can shave off 15% and have zero obligations while I’m left totally vulnerable.
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Oh, I’m hip.
Props on posting Jimmy McGill’s beater car; that’s a prime example of kind of disparity that so many big businesses count on, to keep people trapped in the wage slave system…
Yep, exactly.
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How is owning a business not a job?
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Not going to lean on this too hard, but if you’re going to pull the ‘personal experience doesn’t matter’ card then I’d like to see some data instead.
Being an independent contractor does not require a huge outlay of resources or capital of the sort you’d want a small loan of a million dollars for, at least to get started in many areas.
My mom was a tile and stone contractor - she owned a used tile saw and had to get the LLC filed, which in WA is $180 today and presumably lower when I was younger, and she owned a used old ass car that had a big enough trunk to fit the tile saw, and that was her capital. A lot of other specialists also don’t need a ton, and you’ve got to work as an apprentice for a while anyway or you don’t know wtf you’re doing.
There was some minor capital in terms of ‘hundreds of dollars’ required for things like ‘I’m going to buy some tile and mortar and stuff today and then get paid back next week’, but she worked for another contractor for a few months to get that outlay. She was the only earner, and my family was basically right at poverty level for most of my childhood while that was her work.
Certainly; I know people who are independent IT contractors who make a shit ton of money, and none of them consider themselves working class. I certainly think that my plumber, who I pay pretty well and is booked out a lot, is making some good cash as well, and I’d agree that he’s not working class.
Like, mostly I’m just confused because of your implication that ‘most’ contractors are raking in huge cash, when IMO it’s a pretty small amount of them that succeed and survive, and the majority don’t make it or scrape on by. It’s totally possible that I grew up in a weird spot in a poorer area, but I’d be interested if there was any data on this.
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You seem hung up on the semantics; as I previously stated the label “contractor” doesn’t automatically equate to business owner, which is what Mindy’s talking about.
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I’m talking about the same thing that Mindy is, based on this clarification.
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It seems like you’re taking her comments personally because of your mom’s situation; frankly.
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There was a longish chat on another thread about voting patterns discernable on maps. I was making the distinction between farmer and landowner.
It’s visible in the voting in the south in the US. It’s a distinction that the American right avoid when talking about Zimbabwe as an example that didn’t come up in that thread.
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Like, to take a step back, I just find it weird, like if someone were to say ‘McDonalds employees are really raking in the dough.’ It just doesn’t jive with my personal experience - not decrying them as arguing in bad faith or anything, just weird, and I apologize if I come off as defensive here.
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Independent-Contractor-Salary-by-State
This more matches with what I expected to see: 20-27 an hour is good, for sure, but it’s not ‘upper class’ money, and comes with all the downsides of owning your own business too.
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Forgot to remind that the French for contractor is “entrepreneur”.
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Obviously. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise, that it was something everyone should do.
I have an uncle who is a crappy die-hard Trumper. He’s in tech, in a less lucrative part of his career but still pretty well compensated.
Self-described Redneck.
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I have a lot of friends (from eons ago; I try not to make new friends with known Trump supporters now if I can help it) and family (can’t undo that) who support Trump. None that I know of were QAnon dupes, though it’s possible. None of them – not one – has changed his or her mind about Trump over the last four years or three months or two days. They still think he was robbed of his victory by that cheating Biden, that his “great” presidency will be vindicated by history, and that Biden will destroy the country. I felt great all day yesterday watching the Inauguration coverage, but I still have a pit in my stomach about the legions of misled and misinformed people out there who just can’t recognize the reality and depths of Trump’s (and the right’s) core awfulness.
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O_O
That isn’t what she’s arguing though, so that analogy makes no sense to me.
McD’s workers are NOT owners. Many people classified as ‘Independent Contractors’ also are NOT business owners; they’re often just regular employees that a company doesn’t want to claim as such.
I’m gonna move on, now; have a good one.
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