What are the complexities of the middle class?

After reading the chapter and viewing the short video: What do the Shmoos really represent?
What do the Shmoos really represent?
Why are the Shmoos so important and why does the current economy depend on destroying them?
What are the complexities of the middle class?
Why do governments tax the poor and not the rich?
https://www.cc.com/video/jfmt11/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-world-of-class-warfare-the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over

Notes Class Counts by Erik Olen Wright
Ch. 1 Class Analysis
1) The parable of the shmoo
i. Shmoos only provide necessities not luxuries
ii. What will shmoos provide? Examples
iii. Distribution of shmoos
iv. Universal human interest
1. Workers as “universal class”
2. Justice without purposeful altruism
b. Deprivation is not a byproduct but a necessity
c. Exploitation is necessary for profit in capitalist system
d. Garden of Eden must be destroyed….moral/religious argument?
e. Fundamental antagonism between capitalists and workers. Capitalists must block social improvements that would empower workers. (Healthcare, Universal Income, Free Education)
2) Exploitation
a. Term included moral condemnation as it causes harm to the exploited.
b. Three principles of exploitation:
i. Inverse interdependent welfare principle
ii. Exclusion principle
iii. Appropriation principle
c. Non-exploitative oppression (conditions 1 & 2)
i. Native Americans & Slaves
ii. Women & homosexuals
d. “exploitation” vs. “transfer”
i. Unjust
ii. Taxation as unjust….?
3) Class & Exploitation
a. Capitalists (exploiters)
i. Want more labor and must rely on various methods to achieve it (surveillance and control)
b. Workers (exploited) (85%-90%)
c. Petty bourgeois (own and use without hiring others)
4) Complexities….the Middle Class
a. Authority
1. Domination-surveillance, positive & negative sanctions
a. Capitalists must dominate workers
b. Managers delegated powers
i. Managers simultaneously capitalist and workers class
ii. Contradictory class locations
ii. Earnings
1. Managers receive greater proportion of appropriated earnings, but still themselves provide appropriated earnings.
2. Privileged status which allows for higher earnings.
3. “Loyalty Rent”
iii. Skills & expertise
1. Legally certified credentials
b. People not in the paid labor force (babies, retirees, permanently disabled, students, homemakers, etc.)
i. Mediated class locations
1. How are folks connected to capitalism and exploitation.
2. Cross class families
3. Underclass (denied the use of labor power)
c. Employee Investments
i. High level executives who receive high salary that is converted into capitalist investment. (contradictory class location)
d. Temporality
i. Class location can be indeterminate
1. “Shadow class”- class a woman would occupy at the dissolution of marriage.
5) Marx & Weber
a. Class is relational not just locational.
b. Marx -Exploitation/ownership.
c. Weber-life chances/market

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