The Bullshit Filter - The Precariat Trap: Why America Can't Rise Up - BS Filter #147

[Celerity]

Today we pick apart America's slow-motion slide into fascism - the Precariat Trap - and why the 99% can't afford to pick up a pitchfork even when they probably should.

https://zeno.fm/podcast/the-bullshit-filter/episodes/the-precariat-trap-why-america-cant-rise-up-bs-filter-147/



https://thebullshitfilter.com/




Precariat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat

In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which means existing without predictability or security, thereby affecting material or psychological well-being. The term is a portmanteau of precarious and proletariat. Unlike the proletariat of industrial workers in the 20th century, who lacked their own means of production and therefore sold their labor to survive, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labor. They must undertake extensive unremunerated activities that are essential to retaining access to jobs and decent earnings. Classic examples of such unpaid activities include continually searching for work (including preparing for and attending job interviews), as well as being expected to remain perpetually responsive to calls for "gig" work (yet without being paid an actual wage for being "on call" ). The hallmark of the precariat is a lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resulting precarious existence. The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.

Overview

Some theorists suggest that the young precariat class in Europe has become a serious issue in the early part of the 21st century. This has been linked with major mass political developments including the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, and the first presidency of Donald Trump in the United States. The global COVID-19 pandemic has particularly exacerbated food insecurity in the United States. A survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations discovered that only one third of Germans and one quarter of Italians and French had enough money remaining at the end of the month for discretionary spending.

The British economist Guy Standing has analysed the precariat as a new emerging social class in work done for the think tank Policy Network and the World Economic Forum. In his 2014 book entitled A Precariat Charter he argued that all citizens have a right to socially inherited wealth. The latest in the series is titled The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class where he proposed basic income as a solution for addressing the problem.

The analysis of the results of the Great British Class Survey of 2013, a collaboration between the BBC and researchers from several UK universities, contended that there is a new model of class structure consisting of seven classes, ranging from the Elite at the top to the precariat at the bottom. The Precariat class was envisaged as "the most deprived British class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital." This was contrasted with "the Technical Middle Class" in Great Britain, in that instead of having disposable income but no interests, people of the new Precariat Class have all sorts of potential activities they like to engage in but cannot do any of them because they have no money, insecure lives, and are usually trapped in old industrial parts of the country. The precariat class has been emerging in societies such as Japan, where it numbers over two million.

[rampartd]

1. class war 101

keep 'em hungry
keep 'em moving.

precariat is a good way to put it.

what good to win the monopoly game? if you have all the money and the deeds to everything the game is over. may as well lock yourself in a hotel room full howard huges.

[slightlv]

2. This was really intriguing...

and right on point. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, Celerity!

[Celerity]

3. yw