re: Whatever happened to the lower middle class white families like Malcolm in the Middle

They moved their jobs to China and India.

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A show based in the 90s

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And wildly popular in the 2020s. People still want to see that type of show about a wholesome, white, middle class American family, and studios still make it.

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Except the stuff we buy is absolute dog shite if you don't spend lavishly. I would kill to have the same quality of goods my parents had growing up, but it's cheap plastic bullshite unless you spend money. I wish I could do most of the work on my own car, but there's so much electronic shite in them that it's basically impossible if you aren't a professional. Fresh local fish? Nah son, that's like 30 dollars a pound, here's some cheap Chinese shite that you can get for 9 dollars a pound. The 80s outsourced everything for cheap labor and to avoid the goddamn red tape we put on everything in this country. Gross chemicals? Hm we could either use better materials, or better yet, pay some poor Chinese/Indian laborer to suck in those fumes and get cancer for us.


Making the most money possible regardless of the consequences is moral, right and just. It was those companies’ duty to sell the highest margin product to you even if that meant the product was at significantly lower quality than previously produced.

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oh the irony, this place is always screaming capitalism, survival of the fittest, frick labor groups

The white middle class in this country got destroyed.

Automation, international trade, and immigration wiped them out, pushed them down into basically the lower class.

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The white middle class in this country got destroyed.

Automation, international trade, and immigration wiped them out, pushed them down into basically the lower class.

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A more apt description is that the "middle class" has no definition and over time, as more people entered what is the upper middle class, they perceive that as the dead middle, so what is the actual middle would be "lower class" in your eyes.

You see it in every "middle class" discussion on here and they've been the same since GWB was in office. Posters projecting their top 5-10% incomes as median incomes, and then pretending that their status as the upper middle class is some lie/conspiracy, b/c it doesn't conform to their self perception.

The biggest irony is this growth in the "upper middle class" would be destroyed if all of these "America First" policies were enacted. It's a legitimate "cut off your nose to spite your face" scenario unfolding.

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You mean Republicans promoting leftist economics under the guise of "populism"?

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ain’t taking that bait but it’s been around long enough to where we’re going to see some tax evasion charges, and what happens to the funding if the “student-athlete” becomes academically ineligible, are they still getting “scholarships?”

it’s going to be a shite show before this runs its course

I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts and a frequent topic for the guest is their origin story, upbringing etc.


99% say that they grew up “poor” and then when they describe their actual lifestyle as a kid you realize how full of shite they are (at least one parent having a white collar, a couple vacations a year, parents paid for their one year in college, they were given a car in high school).

The female comics seem to be way worse about it. Can’t remember who but there was one woman who said she came from a poor family and then went on to describe growing up on a multiacre farm that her parents owned and when she was 11 her parents sent her to an elite tennis academy in Florida where she trained to be a professional tennis player for 4 years lol.

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Can’t remember who but there was one woman who said she came from a poor family and then went on to describe growing up on a multiacre farm that her parents owned and when she was 11 her parents sent her to an elite tennis academy in Florida where she trained to be a professional tennis player for 4 years lol.

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A google search makes me think it's Hannah Berner

And I grew up relatively poor. Not "no electricity or running water" poor, but single parent earner with multiple kids. Sharing bedrooms for years. Periods of worrying that mom would miss a mortgage payment. Any car issue seemed like we were one step away from chaos.

I mean that’s pretty much our family of 5

All of our money go to kids tuition because having them in a good school is our priority. So we go without most things, drive older cars, and have a lot of hand me downs between them.