I recognize it’s a whole tangent anyway, and I’m not arguing against the point brought up here earlier, that many of the big QANON supporters are high earning successful business owners. I’ll just let that be the end of my argument here.
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And don’t forget all the expensive toys they tow with the trucks: $$$ fishing boats, waterski boats, snowmobile and ATV trailers, etc. between truck and toys they add up to the same total as a nice suburban home in most US cities.
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Agreed, and also the perception. I work with people who consider themselves “independent contractors” and no matter how often I say “No, you’re not. We’re tenured faculty, that’s different” they absolutely hold to their beliefs. It makes we wonder what they’re teaching in the classroom. I also wonder what they’d think if the university actually did treat them as independent contractors [which contingent faculty essentially are and for whom those same people have very little real sympathy].
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Great. Thanks for coming.
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Well I am not sure where the cut off for working class is. You can afford a nice truck like that in many fields and still not own the means of production. Also, things like farm subsidies and expense write offs means a lot of rural people and people who are contractors, plumbers, electricians, etc end up affording nice things they wouldn’t normally be able to. (In MO you can spot a farm truck because they aren’t required to have a license plate on the back, for some reason.)
When it comes to people in these fields I’d take some issue with not considering them working class if they are more or less working for themselves. I know electricians, general contractors, and a heating cooling guy who have bounced from working from others, to being more or less one person outfits. Freelancers, basically. I also know someone who works for Ford in a union who has a nice truck. I dunno if he gets good financing or what. The capital to start up doing those sorts of things isn’t usually that much - as much as it is to get the know how of what to do - and the client base to do it. That is the hardest part with freelance, in my experience, getting sources of reliable and consistent work. That and the total lack of benefits.
At any rate - no matter where we want to place people in the spectrum of “working class”, it makes sense that many of those who gravitate to the Trump message and the anti-socialism message are doing better than the average American. In their mind, these programs won’t make their lives easier/better. They will not benefit from them. They feel that their current level of status and wealth has to be sacrificed. They feel like they will be dragged down to a lower level, instead of programs raising everybody up.
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But what your individual example is referring to neither negates the classification or the relevance to the OP; that the MAGAts that have the resources to be active in Q and other far-right groups are emblematic of wealthy contractors, and thus not working class.
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That picture, though…
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In “disillusioned” news…
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A leopard ate his face?
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The old saying really is true: “when you lose the mulleted grifter who hoards and abuses endangered apex predators and may have been involved in murder but somehow becomes a social media star because America is fucking weird, you have lost the country.”
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Running a business is a job. Owning a business is not.
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To be fair, he is a tiger expert… maybe doesn’t know a lot about leopards.
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Jesus, the corporate take over of the university is pretty much complete, huh…
It is fuzzy, but it relates to people’s abilities to make ends meet, put money away for emergencies, etc.
Let’s not conflate doing well with being a business owner, because its’ really not what I meant.
Which was my whole point.
A tiger.
I’d argue that being employed by someone else is a job, owning your own business is work, but not a job.
No he’s not. If he was, he wouldn’t have abused them the way he did.
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It’s work if you’re the one running the business, but lots of rich people own businesses without actually doing any of the work.
Ted Turner is one of the biggest land owners in the United States but that doesn’t make him a farmer.
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What about Bill Gates?
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Um. Okay.
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I would posit that the term is indicative of attitude more than it is of income.
For example, I consider the Walton family (heirs of Wal-Mart) to be big-time White Trash. For that matter, so is He Who Shall Not Be Named & his spawn (except for Barron).
Didn’t Biden promise to raise taxes on the ‘rich’? That would tend to help explain his relative lack of support in the higher income bracket.
There must be a graph somewhere that compares HWSNBN’s support among various income groups for '16 & '20, but I seem to remember that he got a substantial % of upper-income votes last time, as well.
They are not.
They are the wealthy elite. So is Trump. They (especially Trump) might pretend to be “white trash” because it benefits them.
It’s probably not the only reason.
But hey. Apparently every thing I said here is problematic and needs to be endlessly picked apart and corrected, so I’ll bow out.
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Data looks solid. Is there something quantified I should look at that contradicts it?
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I was taught as a youngster not to use that phrase because of its passive racist connotations. I think that was a good call.
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