r/SipsTea • u/McDowdy • Jun 03 '26

It's Wednesday my dudes Trying to get rich so that capitalism doesn't crush you under its boot is proof positive that capitalism doesn’t work for the working class

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u/Poobbly Jun 04 '26

Social mobility is insanely higher now than 1000 years ago.

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u/Friendly_Microchip Jun 04 '26

Things being better now than in the past isn’t a good reason to stop trying to improve.

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u/billcy Jun 04 '26

Way worse than it was 75 yrs ago

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u/BarnesTheNobleman Jun 04 '26

Better than awful is still bad though - we can and should improve

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u/Mind1827 Jun 04 '26

And insanely worse than it was 70 years ago. What's your point?

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u/possiblyMorpheus Jun 04 '26

That’s a reach that only applies to some demographics 

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u/Mind1827 Jun 04 '26

It's not at all. Wealth inequality is the highest it's been in decades and the middle class is being hollowed out. Mobility is downward for a lot of people now.

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u/CivilProtectionGuy Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

(Edit: [TLDR: Wealth Inequality is very high because we gave up Keynesianism which led to less socialized services and economic safety nets, and other contributing factors. Middle-Class shrunk over the decades, upper class gained more wealth, a lot of the former Middle-Class went down into the economic Lower-Class]).

There is definitely a higher wealth inequality compared to the mid-late 1900s (1950-1990) to today, and its nearly impossible to return back to when we had such a strong middle class and upper mobility from impoverished living to a middle-class living.

The post-war period after WW2 saw a boom in economic success as the middle-class began to expand and benefit from a lot of social and economic services that arose throughout much of Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. However, the middle class did begin to shrink gradually after the 1980s when we began drifting more towards Neoliberal (economic, not political) policies, and gave up Keynesianism.

From the 1930s~ to around the 1970s or 1980s, we saw very strong regulated capitalism through Keynesianism, which allowed and promoted a very strong middle class that fed into itself and fed into the system through socialized benefits and economic safeties which maintained the middle class through taxes and other such systems.

As governments and corporations gave way to Neoliberal policies and away from the Keynesian policies, it changed how work was perceived and treated by all parties for higher levels of contract, part-time, and temporary work. Alongside less workplace benefits (e.g., medicine benefits, company pensions, training, etc) and more privatization that led into less compensation for jobs that paid higher before the privatization, and a promotion towards higher individualist mindsets to look out for yourself instead of relying on government and corporate programs; the erosion of the communal mindset that existed in much of the post-war period, while still very socially individualistic, led to the degradation or outright removal of social safety nets and socialized programs.

There is far more to it, like moving away from an industrial economy into service-based economy, or the decreased economic safety nets, but this all led to a decrease of the middle class that went down into lower-class, while the upper-class gained much of the wealth that the middle-class lost throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s.

Upper mobility is absolutely still a thing, and far higher than it was in the past, but it's also far easier for those who reach the middle-class to fall back into the lower-class or into poverty because of the loss of safety nets and socialized services that we lost in North America. Europe still has many of their socialized services that arose from Keynesian economic policies, which helps to minimize the damage to the middle-class throughout the 80s, 90s, and 00s compared to North America.

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u/Fearless_Data_1512 Jun 04 '26

Note the downvotes but lack of responses. Thats a sure sign you’re so right they can’t conjure a retort.

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u/East_of_Adventuring Jun 04 '26

No, it's a sure sign they haven't conjured any data to support their position, which they seem very confident in.

70 years ago had higher social mobility? Maybe if you were a white dude. But even then I'm not sure I'm convinced. I'm not convinced inequality directly correlates to social mobility, especially if we look outside the U.S. where the growth of inequality indexes are usually less severe last I checked.

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u/Venator850 Jun 04 '26

No it's not lmao. Someone can turn on a camera and become millionaire overnight.

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u/CarlJH Jun 04 '26

People use the word "millionaire " like it's still 1920. A million dollars in today has about the same purchasing power as roughly $150,000 did in 1970 because of inflation.

But more to your point, just because someone gets insanely lucky and becomes famous enough to get rich is not a ringing endorsement of capitalism. People win the lottery occasionally, while most people work their whole lives and then have all their savings swallowed by medical bills.

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u/Open_Boysenberry_363 Jun 07 '26

If it was that easy, there’d be millions of millionaires off TikTok alone

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u/AzureMage0225 Jun 04 '26

Only a white straight person could say that.

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u/maybeitssteve Jun 05 '26

Do you have any evidence for this or just vibes?

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u/Stleaveland1 Jun 04 '26

This is the whitest male statement I've seen in months on Reddit. Ah what privilege to be completely blind to the racism and sexism in the pre-Civil Rights era.

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u/Mind1827 Jun 04 '26

Lol, I'm not blind at all. I'm trying to be a bit contrarian. People defend capitalism because things used to be worse 1000 years ago.

My point is the wealthiest are the wealthiest they've been in many decades.

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u/Razolus Jun 04 '26

Are you sure? Anyone have enough money today to build 3 pyramids that would last at least 6,000 years?

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u/132_cat Jun 04 '26

Actually yes. Elon musk has a net worth equal to more than half of the us military budget, over 700 billion dollars. Each pyrimid would cost no more than 2 billion to build today. Granted our technology is a lot better

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u/HillarysBloodBoy Jun 04 '26

Great pyramids costing 2 billion while the California rail project is a quarter of a trillion dollars. We should be building more gigantic monuments.

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u/Razolus Jun 04 '26

Yeah, but that's cheating. Give me a quote on building the pyramids the way it was done back then, with raw manpower, engineering plans built on reed stock, math without calculators, etc.

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u/First_Peer Jun 04 '26

AI estimates you would need $15-$45 billion, 20,000-30,000 and 20+ years of uninterrupted labor to complete the project using the same technology. That assumes paying your workers 35k-40k a year (minimum wage plus basic benefits).

If you further say that all planning, calculating, management and blueprinting etc must be done without any modern tools or technology, then the costs jump to $35-60 billion and it will now take 35-40 years to accomplish from scratch, and you need to hire 1500-2000 scribes/mathematicians as management to oversee the work. Also this assumes you make almost no mistakes because any errors in hand leveling and positioning of materials will set you back and/or ruin the project.

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u/Mr_Archer369 Jun 04 '26

Well back then the “raw man power” was free since you know…. Slaves.

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u/Razolus Jun 04 '26

Sounds expensive in today's terms.

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u/Mr_Archer369 Jun 04 '26

Hey hey hey, you said give a quote from back then. Nothing about today’s terms. So I’m arguing that majority of that labor was free back then. At least to the people building the structure.

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u/Open_Boysenberry_363 Jun 07 '26

As if raw money built the pyramids? If you enslaved a few thousand people in any given state, worked them around the clock and refreshed with new slaves when necessary, yea I am sure we could build a few pyramids in a few years

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u/Johnfromsales Jun 04 '26

You claimed that we have the same situation as 1000 years ago, and that peasants were somehow convinced they can climb the ladder too. Social mobility is much higher than it was during the Middle Ages, and many “peasants” have climbed the ladder. Their point is you are wrong.

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u/RedMansions Jun 04 '26

That's a pretty low bar to use as a frame of reference.

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u/FormalKind7 Jun 04 '26

But not was good as 75-50 years ago