#middleclass — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #middleclass, aggregated by home.social.
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FYI: The ONLY reason the #middleclass came into existence was to keep #communism at bay! #placation101
https://mastodon.world/@somecanuckchick/117088968892678693
#capitalism #capitalismFAIL #socialism101 #socialism #capitalismBS #redscare #fauxredscare #coldwarpartdeux #generationjones #genx #geny #millennials #genz #generationwars #boomers #babyboomers
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FYI: The ONLY reason the #middleclass came into existence was to keep #communism at bay! #placation101
https://mastodon.world/@somecanuckchick/117088968892678693
#capitalism #capitalismFAIL #socialism101 #socialism #capitalismBS #redscare #fauxredscare #coldwarpartdeux #generationjones #genx #geny #millennials #genz #generationwars #boomers #babyboomers
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Forget 'AI-enabled engineers' – the reality is a 20% drop in junior dev employment and a massive increase in technical debt. AI is turning mid-level programmers into 'force multipliers for chaos,' generating mountains of 'non-sense' code that compiles but breaks systems. Senior engineers are now babysitting AI, risking skill atrophy. This isn't progress; it's a 'prescription for long term pain'…
#AI #softwareengineering #middleclass
🤖 This post was AI-generated.
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Forget 'AI-enabled engineers' – the reality is a 20% drop in junior dev employment and a massive increase in technical debt. AI is turning mid-level programmers into 'force multipliers for chaos,' generating mountains of 'non-sense' code that compiles but breaks systems. Senior engineers are now babysitting AI, risking skill atrophy. This isn't progress; it's a 'prescription for long term pain'…
#AI #softwareengineering #middleclass
🤖 This post was AI-generated.
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🚀🤖 Oh no, #AI is "destroying" the sacred middle class of software engineering! Quick, someone alert the #JavaScript overlords so we can start a GoFundMe for all those poor, displaced senior engineers who are just too good at their jobs to be replaced by mere algorithms. 😅💻
https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html #Impact #SoftwareEngineering #MiddleClass #Displacement #HackerNews #ngated -
🚀🤖 Oh no, #AI is "destroying" the sacred middle class of software engineering! Quick, someone alert the #JavaScript overlords so we can start a GoFundMe for all those poor, displaced senior engineers who are just too good at their jobs to be replaced by mere algorithms. 😅💻
https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html #Impact #SoftwareEngineering #MiddleClass #Displacement #HackerNews #ngated -
AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271994
#HackerNews #AI #softwareengineering #middleclass #technology #disruption #jobmarket
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AI is removing the middle class of software engineering
https://blog.florianherrengt.com/ai-removing-middle-class-software-engineering.html
Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49271994
#HackerNews #AI #softwareengineering #middleclass #technology #disruption #jobmarket
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RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/117053403211300699
From this article by Robert Reich about the Incredible Shrinking American Middle Class:
'A half-century ago, America had the largest middle class in the history of the nation and of the world.
- America’s huge middle class has become a small shadow of what it once was. The bottom 90% are struggling to make ends meet. The top 0.01% holds an increasing portion of all wealth.
- Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.
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RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/117053403211300699
From this article by Robert Reich about the Incredible Shrinking American Middle Class:
'A half-century ago, America had the largest middle class in the history of the nation and of the world.
- America’s huge middle class has become a small shadow of what it once was. The bottom 90% are struggling to make ends meet. The top 0.01% holds an increasing portion of all wealth.
- Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.
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March of the clowns.
"A Washington Post-Ipsos poll this month found that 18 percent of Republicans — nearly a fifth — are feeling worse off financially since Trump started his second term. That’s compared to just 4 percent who said the same thing in September 2018, at the same point in Trump’s first term."
#economics #inflation #middleclass #Trumpism #tarrifs #trade #authoritarianism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2026/07/26/why-even-some-trump-supporters-are-souring-his-handling-economy/ -
March of the clowns.
"A Washington Post-Ipsos poll this month found that 18 percent of Republicans — nearly a fifth — are feeling worse off financially since Trump started his second term. That’s compared to just 4 percent who said the same thing in September 2018, at the same point in Trump’s first term."
#economics #inflation #middleclass #Trumpism #tarrifs #trade #authoritarianism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2026/07/26/why-even-some-trump-supporters-are-souring-his-handling-economy/ -
Keep voting for clowns talking about Woke politics and DEI initiatives, while society collapses.
"But this is no game for struggling Americans. The latest Urban Institute survey on family well-being and basic needs highlights a critical shift in consumer behavior. Last year, more than 1 in 3 working-age adults used credit cards to buy groceries — and many of them had trouble paying them off."
#economics #USA #politics #inequality #precariate #poverty #middleclass
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/29/more-americans-are-financing-groceries-heres-why-thats-problem/ -
Keep voting for clowns talking about Woke politics and DEI initiatives, while society collapses.
"But this is no game for struggling Americans. The latest Urban Institute survey on family well-being and basic needs highlights a critical shift in consumer behavior. Last year, more than 1 in 3 working-age adults used credit cards to buy groceries — and many of them had trouble paying them off."
#economics #USA #politics #inequality #precariate #poverty #middleclass
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/29/more-americans-are-financing-groceries-heres-why-thats-problem/ -
There are lessons for all countries on how to and how not to improve the incomes of citizens through education and R&D.
#education #R&D #middleclass -
There are lessons for all countries on how to and how not to improve the incomes of citizens through education and R&D.
#education #R&D #middleclass -
The Cost of Trump Protectionism: Assessing the Economic Strain of 2025‑2026
By Winston Wendell It has been quite an eventful year – to be more precise, the economic policy of President Trump during his second term of office is turning ordinary everyday activities into a burden. Americans jokingly refer to the current situation as "Trumpflation". However, one might wonder what is causing the increase of prices? Let us examine the causes in detail. Tariffs and Price Surges In 2025, President Trump introduced the tariffs of 10% on imports and 60% on imports from […] -
I support this content
"This video is the full story of how America went from a country where being “middle class” was the norm… to a place where a few hundred billionaires control trillions of dollars, our data, our attention, and basically the direction of modern life."
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I support this content
"This video is the full story of how America went from a country where being “middle class” was the norm… to a place where a few hundred billionaires control trillions of dollars, our data, our attention, and basically the direction of modern life."
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This is what many Americans call socialism…
this is what they don’t want their taxes paying for. This is what Project 2025 and the Trump administration say need to be cut, and what individual responsibility and empowerment should take care of. These are some of the programs many Americans say are used by lazy loafers who don’t want to work. And, no, nobody pays for their own Social Security and Medicare benefits - Both are a collective risk using an insurance concept. Americas social safety net Social Security - Retirement, […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/07/28/this-is-what-many-americans-call-socialism/
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This is what many Americans call socialism…
this is what they don’t want their taxes paying for. This is what Project 2025 and the Trump administration say need to be cut, and what individual responsibility and empowerment should take care of. These are some of the programs many Americans say are used by lazy loafers who don’t want to work. And, no, nobody pays for their own Social Security and Medicare benefits - Both are a collective risk using an insurance concept. Americas social safety net Social Security - Retirement, […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/07/28/this-is-what-many-americans-call-socialism/
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Denmark vs. United States
Some Americans are obsessed with doing away with their version of socialism, as inaccurate as it may be. Socialism is not a system providing a strong social safety net. But there is something more important in comparing high taxes with risk and true out of pocket costs. Lower taxes are not necessarily a net benefit and definitely do not spread risk financial stress equally. Here is a summary of what people in Denmark receive for their high taxes. • Pensions, unemployment, and social […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/07/27/denmark-vs-united-states/
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Denmark vs. United States
Some Americans are obsessed with doing away with their version of socialism, as inaccurate as it may be. Socialism is not a system providing a strong social safety net. But there is something more important in comparing high taxes with risk and true out of pocket costs. Lower taxes are not necessarily a net benefit and definitely do not spread risk financial stress equally. Here is a summary of what people in Denmark receive for their high taxes. • Pensions, unemployment, and social […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/07/27/denmark-vs-united-states/
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RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116914483430138721
#TruthTuesday 👇🧐
This bears sharing till we all see the #truth of our shared #history: 👉 those #1980s "leaders" - #Reagan & #Thatcher especially, & lackey-in-chief #Greenspan - these & the #conservatives that followed them, have endowed upon our 21st century a world of the hollowed #middleclass, gross #inequality, fiscal & monetary mismanagement leading to #highCPI, & endless #wars (including the enablement of #genocide such as in #Gaza). They're all dead but their torrid legacy survives...🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️👇 -
RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/116914483430138721
#TruthTuesday 👇🧐
This bears sharing till we all see the #truth of our shared #history: 👉 those #1980s "leaders" - #Reagan & #Thatcher especially, & lackey-in-chief #Greenspan - these & the #conservatives that followed them, have endowed upon our 21st century a world of the hollowed #middleclass, gross #inequality, fiscal & monetary mismanagement leading to #highCPI, & endless #wars (including the enablement of #genocide such as in #Gaza). They're all dead but their torrid legacy survives...🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️👇 -
“#Brazilisation was supposed to be a description of failure. The term names a specific kind of social decomposition: not collapse, but hollowing. The middle thins. Formal employment gives way to precarity. Public institutions continue in name while private systems take over in practice. The rich retreat into secure enclaves; everyone else improvises around decaying services. Elections continue, careers disappear, infrastructure ages, and the future is repeatedly promised without arriving.
Modern forms remain. Modern outcomes do not.
But every afterlife needs maintenance.
#AI may provide it.
The #agent does not rebuild the #middleclass. It restores many of its functions as software.”
https://thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/the-artificial-middle
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“#Brazilisation was supposed to be a description of failure. The term names a specific kind of social decomposition: not collapse, but hollowing. The middle thins. Formal employment gives way to precarity. Public institutions continue in name while private systems take over in practice. The rich retreat into secure enclaves; everyone else improvises around decaying services. Elections continue, careers disappear, infrastructure ages, and the future is repeatedly promised without arriving.
Modern forms remain. Modern outcomes do not.
But every afterlife needs maintenance.
#AI may provide it.
The #agent does not rebuild the #middleclass. It restores many of its functions as software.”
https://thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/the-artificial-middle
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‘BURNHAM PLOTS HOMES TAX RAID ON MIDDLE CLASS’ headline of today’s The MAIL. Should read
BURHAM TOLD TO TAX THE MIDDLE CLASS BY THE UPPER CLASS.Watch out for Farage’s fascist cult bias Media time; already they politicised Widdecombe’s murder and the false flag of a 12 point poll Binface lead?
Will the U.K. public be suckered by a soleless grifter as easily as the U.S. one was by its fascist gangster class; can the fascist class ever be defeated? #TroubleAhead #ukpol #uspol #middleclass #upperclass #workingclass #interestsclass #fascistclass #politicalphilosophy #philosophy #dialectic #mobrule #freedom
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‘BURNHAM PLOTS HOMES TAX RAID ON MIDDLE CLASS’ headline of today’s The MAIL. Should read
BURHAM TOLD TO TAX THE MIDDLE CLASS BY THE UPPER CLASS.Watch out for Farage’s fascist cult bias Media time; already they politicised Widdecombe’s murder and the false flag of a 12 point poll Binface lead?
Will the U.K. public be suckered by a soleless grifter as easily as the U.S. one was by its fascist gangster class; can the fascist class ever be defeated? #TroubleAhead #ukpol #uspol #middleclass #upperclass #workingclass #interestsclass #fascistclass #politicalphilosophy #philosophy #dialectic #mobrule #freedom
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The good message of Thom Hartmann's book 'Who Killed The American Dream?'
"It was stolen, and stolen things can be recovered."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-happens-when-trump-voters-realize
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The good message of Thom Hartmann's book 'Who Killed The American Dream?'
"It was stolen, and stolen things can be recovered."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-happens-when-trump-voters-realize
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November Election – be vigilant
This November’s election will be one of the most important in our history…because we have a president actively trying to undermine our confidence in the outcome. His constant drum beat about fraud, cheating in elections (only by the opposition party, of course) is intended to create skepticism about November’s outcome even before the vote takes place. It seem obvious that Trump is concerned about losing control in Congress. Trump does not like to lose, His malignant narcissism […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/07/09/november-election-be-vigilant/
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The Iran war has revealed how deeply material interests are embedded in strategic calculations, concentrating rewards among powerful insiders while leaving society to absorb the costs. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/06/03/world/instability-powerful-political-instrument/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #commentary #worldnews #iran #us #donaldtrump #oil #inflation #iranianeconomy #useconomy #middleclass
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The Iran war has revealed how deeply material interests are embedded in strategic calculations, concentrating rewards among powerful insiders while leaving society to absorb the costs. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2026/06/03/world/instability-powerful-political-instrument/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #commentary #worldnews #iran #us #donaldtrump #oil #inflation #iranianeconomy #useconomy #middleclass
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"With income upwards of $150,000 a year before taxes, a family in the #UnitedStates should be able to live a comfortable #middleclass life. But for Rachel and her husband, a #religious #Jewish couple in #NewJersey with three children, it’s barely enough to scrape by — even after her parents step in to help.
“I’m a CPA, and I go through my expenses every single year,” Rachel (not her real name) told The Times of Israel. “I can’t make it work.”
It’s not because they live a lavish lifestyle or have an oversized house, Rachel said. It is simply the cost of living in a #ModernOrthodox Jewish community: school tuition, #kosher food, holidays, and community fees that seem to gobble up more and more of the family’s income every year."
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"With income upwards of $150,000 a year before taxes, a family in the #UnitedStates should be able to live a comfortable #middleclass life. But for Rachel and her husband, a #religious #Jewish couple in #NewJersey with three children, it’s barely enough to scrape by — even after her parents step in to help.
“I’m a CPA, and I go through my expenses every single year,” Rachel (not her real name) told The Times of Israel. “I can’t make it work.”
It’s not because they live a lavish lifestyle or have an oversized house, Rachel said. It is simply the cost of living in a #ModernOrthodox Jewish community: school tuition, #kosher food, holidays, and community fees that seem to gobble up more and more of the family’s income every year."
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How tax burdens compare across wealthy countries and what it means for middle-class workers
📰 Original title: How big would your tax burden be in another rich country?
🤖 IA: It's not clickbait ✅
👥 Users: It's not clickbait ✅ -
How tax burdens compare across wealthy countries and what it means for middle-class workers
📰 Original title: How big would your tax burden be in another rich country?
🤖 IA: It's not clickbait ✅
👥 Users: It's not clickbait ✅ -
"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by #MalvinaReynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, #PeteSeeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964. The song is a #socialSatire about the development of #suburbia and associated #conformist #middleclass attitudes. It mocks suburban #tractHousing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky" and which "all look just the same".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkoPCXZ_K4 -
"Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by #MalvinaReynolds in 1962. The song was first released by her friend, #PeteSeeger, in 1963, and became his only charting single in January 1964. The song is a #socialSatire about the development of #suburbia and associated #conformist #middleclass attitudes. It mocks suburban #tractHousing as "little boxes" of different colors "all made out of ticky-tacky" and which "all look just the same".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkoPCXZ_K4 -
‘Class traitor’ @[email protected] blows whistle on how our economic system underpinning #AI makes megawealthy wealthier while crushing rest of us. #neoliberalism #tippingpoint #inequality #EndOfOpportunity #SocialCohesion #pitchforks #MiddleClass youtu.be/qa6GjNzxjHE?...
Will AI Destroy The Middle Cla... -
‘Class traitor’ @[email protected] blows whistle on how our economic system underpinning #AI makes megawealthy wealthier while crushing rest of us. #neoliberalism #tippingpoint #inequality #EndOfOpportunity #SocialCohesion #pitchforks #MiddleClass youtu.be/qa6GjNzxjHE?...
Will AI Destroy The Middle Cla... -
Do billionaires harm the middle-class?
No, billionaires do not systematically harm middle-class Americans. The evidence shows their success largely stems from creating value through innovation, companies, and productivity gains that benefit consumers, workers, and the broader economy—far more than any zero-sum extraction. Correlation between rising billionaire wealth and middle-class challenges exists, but causation is weak and often runs the other way: economic and policy factors drive both. Value Creation and Consumer […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/05/12/do-billionaires-harm-the-middle-class/
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Do billionaires harm the middle-class?
No, billionaires do not systematically harm middle-class Americans. The evidence shows their success largely stems from creating value through innovation, companies, and productivity gains that benefit consumers, workers, and the broader economy—far more than any zero-sum extraction. Correlation between rising billionaire wealth and middle-class challenges exists, but causation is weak and often runs the other way: economic and policy factors drive both. Value Creation and Consumer […]https://quinnscommentary.net/2026/05/12/do-billionaires-harm-the-middle-class/
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More #Americans are moving into the #uppermiddleclass than ever - but some still don't feel wealthy
In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper #middleclass, up from about 10% in 1979. The AEI report classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class.
Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/more-americans-are-moving-into-the-upper-middle-class-than-ever-but-some-still-don-t-feel-wealthy/ar-AA20e3jU -
More #Americans are moving into the #uppermiddleclass than ever - but some still don't feel wealthy
In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper #middleclass, up from about 10% in 1979. The AEI report classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class.
Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/more-americans-are-moving-into-the-upper-middle-class-than-ever-but-some-still-don-t-feel-wealthy/ar-AA20e3jU -
The Architecture of Abandonment: What the Billionaire Bunker Tells Us About the Coming Century
There’s an old saying in the theatre that if you see a gun in the first act, it will be fired in the third act. We are seeing the same drama play out in our real lives as the Billionaire Oligarchs of the world load their Doomsday bunkers in the act one, and we, the unwashed and unknown, prepare for its firing in act three. Yes, the dramatic arc carries its own answer. Mark Zuckerberg’s Koʻolau Ranch on Kauai, valued north of three hundred million dollars, includes two mansions joined by a tunnel that leads to a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, sealed behind a blast-resistant metal door packed with concrete, with its own living quarters, mechanical room, and escape hatch. The compound is engineered for self-sufficiency in water, energy, and food, monitored by round-the-clock security and a six-foot perimeter wall, with construction crews bound by non-disclosure agreements that have been enforced through firings. The owner of that property has called it “a little shelter,” “like a hurricane shelter, whatever,” in remarks to Bloomberg. The engineering specifications tell a different story. Blast doors and escape hatches are absent from the standard Hawaiian hurricane code. They appear on the architectural plans of people who expect to be hunted.
These are not isolated cases. Peter Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in June 2011 under an “exceptional circumstances” clause after spending only twelve days in the country, less than one percent of the typical 1,350-day residency requirement. In 2015 he purchased a 477-acre estate at Glendhu Bay on Lake Wānaka through a private entity called Second Star Limited, named for a reference to Peter Pan, and commissioned a hillside lodge complex from the Tokyo Olympic Stadium architect Kengo Kuma; the Queenstown-Lakes District Council rejected the proposal in 2022 on landscape-impact grounds, and an Environment Court appeal failed. Sam Altman, in his 2016 New Yorker profile, described his own preparedness inventory: guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks issued by the Israeli Defense Forces, and a private patch of land in Big Sur he can fly to, with Thiel’s New Zealand house as his backup plan. Larry Ellison bought ninety-eight percent of Lānaʻi in 2012 for three hundred million dollars from David Murdock, including the water utility, two Four Seasons resorts, and roughly a third of the island’s housing stock; three thousand residents now live on land overwhelmingly held by one private owner.
The most revealing evidence comes not from the architectural drawings but from a single sentence spoken in private. Douglas Rushkoff, a media-theory professor at Queens College, was paid roughly half his annual salary to fly to a desert resort in 2017 to address what he assumed would be an audience of investment bankers; he found instead five hedge fund billionaires who wanted to know which region would be more survivable, Alaska or New Zealand, whether Ray Kurzweil really was uploading his consciousness, and at last, from the CEO of a brokerage house who had nearly completed his own underground bunker system, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” That last question is the smoking gun. The man asking it has already built a bunker, stocked it, hardened it, and hired guards. He has thought past the apocalypse, past the moment when capital ceases to function as a coordination mechanism, past the question of how to retain feudal control over armed retainers in a post-monetary world. He is calm. He has accepted the loss of the system that produced his wealth, and he is calculating the second move.
The middle class is the first move. Every dollar of attention extracted by a social-media platform, each hour of labor metered by a delivery app, retirement accounts loaded with index funds that hold the same fifty companies, tax dollars flowing up the bracket through preferential treatment of capital gains: all of it funds the apparatus that will be used to leave the rest of us behind. The hedge fund manager’s bunker was built with pension money. Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian compound was paid for by the data labor of three billion people who joined Facebook because their friends were there. Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship was a sovereign gift to a man who has never been required to live in the country, granted on the theory that his presence would benefit the nation, by a government persuaded that the benefit had already been delivered through his arrival in the cabinet minister’s office.
The objections write themselves and they all collapse on inspection. The first claim is that these are rich-person hobbies, no different in kind from yachts. Yachts do not require self-sufficient food, water, and energy systems, do not depend on non-disclosure agreements covering construction crews, and remain visible by design. The defining features of the bunker are invisibility, redundancy, and operational independence from civic infrastructure. A yacht assumes the world keeps working. A bunker assumes it does not. The second claim is that these are insurance policies, not statements of intent. Insurance is purchased against losses one believes plausible. The act of buying apocalypse insurance at this scale is itself a data point about what the purchasers expect. If the men with the most access to economic, scientific, and political information are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to harden private exits, that information deserves a hearing.
The third claim is that climate adaptation is rational and the rest of us should do the same. Rational climate adaptation funds public seawalls, public power grids, public emergency services, and public housing relocation. Private adaptation at the billionaire scale withdraws resources from the common pool. The grain that feeds the cattle on Koʻolau Ranch is grain that does not feed the rest of Kauai. The water in the fifty-five-foot-diameter tank does not flow to neighbors. The fenced acreage on Lānaʻi cannot be walked across by the locals whose ancestors are buried there. The fourth claim is that the argument amounts to conspiracy thinking. Every fact assembled here comes from public records, court filings, planning applications, on-the-record interviews, and the billionaires’ own statements. The conspiracy, if there is one, is being conducted in plain view, with planning permits filed and architectural renderings published.
The fifth claim, usually muttered rather than spoken, is that the argument sounds envious. The argument tracks structures, and not personalities. How much money any individual billionaire holds matters less than whether the political order they have helped construct will survive the next thirty years for the rest of us, and the bunkers answer that question. Some of the very wealthy give large portions of their fortunes away during their lifetimes, fund public health initiatives at scale, and have signed pledges to deplete their estates in the name of philanthropy. The argument here concerns a different subset, the ones who have looked at the trajectory and concluded that the rational allocation of capital is toward private hardening rather than public repair. They are an instructive sample because their behavior reveals the working theory of capital itself, and the working theory holds that the system is not worth saving on its current terms.
Democracy assumes shared fate. The whole project of representative government rests on the premise that the people making decisions live in the same world as the people affected by them, breathe the same air, drink the same water, send their children to schools at minimum adjacent to ours. When the decision-makers build self-contained habitats with private water, private food, private energy, and private security, they sever the feedback loop that makes democracy work. Their interest in public infrastructure terminates at the gatehouse. Public health concerns them only as far as the perimeter wall. Climate stability matters to them insofar as they expect to outrun it. The middle class has historically been the buffer between the rich and the poor, absorbing economic shocks through household savings, generational housing wealth, and pension solvency, dampening political shocks through civic participation, jury duty, school board attendance, and local journalism, and providing the cultural ballast that kept the country from tipping. That buffer has thinned for forty years through wage stagnation, healthcare cost transfer, education debt, the conversion of pensions into self-managed retirement accounts, and the conversion of housing from shelter to speculative asset. The bunker is the announcement that the thinning is now sufficient and the wealthy are exiting the social contract entirely.
Consider the concrete consequences. When the next pandemic arrives, those who can ride it out behind blast doors will do so, while the rest will be sent back to work because the economy must run. The next climate event that closes a major American city will find the people with helicopters and private islands on the helicopters and private islands, while their fellow citizens take shelter or scramble onto rooftops. As for the next major financial event, those whose assets are denominated in farmland, gold, hardened compounds, and offshore citizenships will weather it, while the rest lose their houses for the third time in twenty-five years. The bunker is a hedge against the failure of the system that paid for the bunker. It is a short position on civilization, financed by the people whose civilization it is.
Rushkoff gave the hedge fund managers good advice. He told them that the most reliable way to maintain authority over their security force after the event was to treat those people well right now, and the most reliable way to prevent the event was to extend the same ethos to everyone else. They paid his fee and went back to building bunkers. The middle class faces a related choice with a much shorter clock. Either we tax the men building the bunkers at rates that prevent them from completing the bunkers, or we accept that the country will be reorganized around finished bunkers. The same choice presents itself in antitrust enforcement, financial regulation, and progressive taxation: restore them to the levels that built the post-war middle class, or accept the bifurcation into hardened compound and precariat. None of those policies are exotic. They are the conditions under which the American middle class actually existed, between roughly 1945 and 1980, when the top marginal tax rate sat above seventy percent for most of the period and the country produced its single greatest expansion of upward mobility, public infrastructure, and home ownership.
The One Percenters do not build multi-billion-dollar bunkers on private islands as a hobby. They build them because they have run the numbers and the numbers tell them that the rest of us are not going to make it. Whether they are correct about the numbers is a question we get to answer collectively, while we still can answer anything collectively at all. The good news, if there is any, sits inside the same evidence. The bunker-builders are betting that civic life will fail. The bet pays out only if the rest of us let it.
#bunker #doomsday #elite #gop #middleClass #onePercent #payment #rent #rich #suffering -
The Architecture of Abandonment: What the Billionaire Bunker Tells Us About the Coming Century
There’s an old saying in the theatre that if you see a gun in the first act, it will be fired in the third act. We are seeing the same drama play out in our real lives as the Billionaire Oligarchs of the world load their Doomsday bunkers in the act one, and we, the unwashed and unknown, prepare for its firing in act three. Yes, the dramatic arc carries its own answer. Mark Zuckerberg’s Koʻolau Ranch on Kauai, valued north of three hundred million dollars, includes two mansions joined by a tunnel that leads to a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter, sealed behind a blast-resistant metal door packed with concrete, with its own living quarters, mechanical room, and escape hatch. The compound is engineered for self-sufficiency in water, energy, and food, monitored by round-the-clock security and a six-foot perimeter wall, with construction crews bound by non-disclosure agreements that have been enforced through firings. The owner of that property has called it “a little shelter,” “like a hurricane shelter, whatever,” in remarks to Bloomberg. The engineering specifications tell a different story. Blast doors and escape hatches are absent from the standard Hawaiian hurricane code. They appear on the architectural plans of people who expect to be hunted.
These are not isolated cases. Peter Thiel was granted New Zealand citizenship in June 2011 under an “exceptional circumstances” clause after spending only twelve days in the country, less than one percent of the typical 1,350-day residency requirement. In 2015 he purchased a 477-acre estate at Glendhu Bay on Lake Wānaka through a private entity called Second Star Limited, named for a reference to Peter Pan, and commissioned a hillside lodge complex from the Tokyo Olympic Stadium architect Kengo Kuma; the Queenstown-Lakes District Council rejected the proposal in 2022 on landscape-impact grounds, and an Environment Court appeal failed. Sam Altman, in his 2016 New Yorker profile, described his own preparedness inventory: guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks issued by the Israeli Defense Forces, and a private patch of land in Big Sur he can fly to, with Thiel’s New Zealand house as his backup plan. Larry Ellison bought ninety-eight percent of Lānaʻi in 2012 for three hundred million dollars from David Murdock, including the water utility, two Four Seasons resorts, and roughly a third of the island’s housing stock; three thousand residents now live on land overwhelmingly held by one private owner.
The most revealing evidence comes not from the architectural drawings but from a single sentence spoken in private. Douglas Rushkoff, a media-theory professor at Queens College, was paid roughly half his annual salary to fly to a desert resort in 2017 to address what he assumed would be an audience of investment bankers; he found instead five hedge fund billionaires who wanted to know which region would be more survivable, Alaska or New Zealand, whether Ray Kurzweil really was uploading his consciousness, and at last, from the CEO of a brokerage house who had nearly completed his own underground bunker system, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” That last question is the smoking gun. The man asking it has already built a bunker, stocked it, hardened it, and hired guards. He has thought past the apocalypse, past the moment when capital ceases to function as a coordination mechanism, past the question of how to retain feudal control over armed retainers in a post-monetary world. He is calm. He has accepted the loss of the system that produced his wealth, and he is calculating the second move.
The middle class is the first move. Every dollar of attention extracted by a social-media platform, each hour of labor metered by a delivery app, retirement accounts loaded with index funds that hold the same fifty companies, tax dollars flowing up the bracket through preferential treatment of capital gains: all of it funds the apparatus that will be used to leave the rest of us behind. The hedge fund manager’s bunker was built with pension money. Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian compound was paid for by the data labor of three billion people who joined Facebook because their friends were there. Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship was a sovereign gift to a man who has never been required to live in the country, granted on the theory that his presence would benefit the nation, by a government persuaded that the benefit had already been delivered through his arrival in the cabinet minister’s office.
The objections write themselves and they all collapse on inspection. The first claim is that these are rich-person hobbies, no different in kind from yachts. Yachts do not require self-sufficient food, water, and energy systems, do not depend on non-disclosure agreements covering construction crews, and remain visible by design. The defining features of the bunker are invisibility, redundancy, and operational independence from civic infrastructure. A yacht assumes the world keeps working. A bunker assumes it does not. The second claim is that these are insurance policies, not statements of intent. Insurance is purchased against losses one believes plausible. The act of buying apocalypse insurance at this scale is itself a data point about what the purchasers expect. If the men with the most access to economic, scientific, and political information are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to harden private exits, that information deserves a hearing.
The third claim is that climate adaptation is rational and the rest of us should do the same. Rational climate adaptation funds public seawalls, public power grids, public emergency services, and public housing relocation. Private adaptation at the billionaire scale withdraws resources from the common pool. The grain that feeds the cattle on Koʻolau Ranch is grain that does not feed the rest of Kauai. The water in the fifty-five-foot-diameter tank does not flow to neighbors. The fenced acreage on Lānaʻi cannot be walked across by the locals whose ancestors are buried there. The fourth claim is that the argument amounts to conspiracy thinking. Every fact assembled here comes from public records, court filings, planning applications, on-the-record interviews, and the billionaires’ own statements. The conspiracy, if there is one, is being conducted in plain view, with planning permits filed and architectural renderings published.
The fifth claim, usually muttered rather than spoken, is that the argument sounds envious. The argument tracks structures, and not personalities. How much money any individual billionaire holds matters less than whether the political order they have helped construct will survive the next thirty years for the rest of us, and the bunkers answer that question. Some of the very wealthy give large portions of their fortunes away during their lifetimes, fund public health initiatives at scale, and have signed pledges to deplete their estates in the name of philanthropy. The argument here concerns a different subset, the ones who have looked at the trajectory and concluded that the rational allocation of capital is toward private hardening rather than public repair. They are an instructive sample because their behavior reveals the working theory of capital itself, and the working theory holds that the system is not worth saving on its current terms.
Democracy assumes shared fate. The whole project of representative government rests on the premise that the people making decisions live in the same world as the people affected by them, breathe the same air, drink the same water, send their children to schools at minimum adjacent to ours. When the decision-makers build self-contained habitats with private water, private food, private energy, and private security, they sever the feedback loop that makes democracy work. Their interest in public infrastructure terminates at the gatehouse. Public health concerns them only as far as the perimeter wall. Climate stability matters to them insofar as they expect to outrun it. The middle class has historically been the buffer between the rich and the poor, absorbing economic shocks through household savings, generational housing wealth, and pension solvency, dampening political shocks through civic participation, jury duty, school board attendance, and local journalism, and providing the cultural ballast that kept the country from tipping. That buffer has thinned for forty years through wage stagnation, healthcare cost transfer, education debt, the conversion of pensions into self-managed retirement accounts, and the conversion of housing from shelter to speculative asset. The bunker is the announcement that the thinning is now sufficient and the wealthy are exiting the social contract entirely.
Consider the concrete consequences. When the next pandemic arrives, those who can ride it out behind blast doors will do so, while the rest will be sent back to work because the economy must run. The next climate event that closes a major American city will find the people with helicopters and private islands on the helicopters and private islands, while their fellow citizens take shelter or scramble onto rooftops. As for the next major financial event, those whose assets are denominated in farmland, gold, hardened compounds, and offshore citizenships will weather it, while the rest lose their houses for the third time in twenty-five years. The bunker is a hedge against the failure of the system that paid for the bunker. It is a short position on civilization, financed by the people whose civilization it is.
Rushkoff gave the hedge fund managers good advice. He told them that the most reliable way to maintain authority over their security force after the event was to treat those people well right now, and the most reliable way to prevent the event was to extend the same ethos to everyone else. They paid his fee and went back to building bunkers. The middle class faces a related choice with a much shorter clock. Either we tax the men building the bunkers at rates that prevent them from completing the bunkers, or we accept that the country will be reorganized around finished bunkers. The same choice presents itself in antitrust enforcement, financial regulation, and progressive taxation: restore them to the levels that built the post-war middle class, or accept the bifurcation into hardened compound and precariat. None of those policies are exotic. They are the conditions under which the American middle class actually existed, between roughly 1945 and 1980, when the top marginal tax rate sat above seventy percent for most of the period and the country produced its single greatest expansion of upward mobility, public infrastructure, and home ownership.
The One Percenters do not build multi-billion-dollar bunkers on private islands as a hobby. They build them because they have run the numbers and the numbers tell them that the rest of us are not going to make it. Whether they are correct about the numbers is a question we get to answer collectively, while we still can answer anything collectively at all. The good news, if there is any, sits inside the same evidence. The bunker-builders are betting that civic life will fail. The bet pays out only if the rest of us let it.
#bunker #doomsday #elite #gop #middleClass #onePercent #payment #rent #rich #suffering -
The Capitalism Myth Exposed: Workers Build America, Billionaires Take the Credit
Workers built America, but billionaires took the credit. A sharp breakdown of capitalism’s biggest myths.
#billionaires #capitalism #corporateGreed #democracy #EconomicJustice #economicReform #healthcareReform #LaborMovement #middleClass #ProgressivePolitics #publicInvestment #unions #wageStagnation #wealthInequality #workerPower #workersRights https://wp.me/p1OjMZ-oTa -
#MiddleClass #Americans Are #Secretly Living in Their #Cars… This Is Getting Worse #yt #TheAmericanNightmare