#class-and-power

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Careers
fromSilicon Canals
1 day ago

8 status symbols that used to mean success but now just signal insecurity - Silicon Canals

Status symbols have shifted from markers of success to indicators of insecurity and financial struggle.
fromApaonline
2 days ago

The Feminine as Structural Problem

The deeper I go, the more feminist I become! Yet my experience of academic philosophy has largely disclosed the opposite: a discipline that solemnly declares its devotion to openness proves curiously unsettled by me as a woman.
Philosophy
Right-wing politics
fromWIRED
3 days ago

The Promise of 'Woke 2' Is Fueling a Leftist Fever Dream

Donald Trump's 2024 victory was seen as a rejection of 'woke' ideology, leading to a culture of offensive speech without fear of consequences.
Education
fromSilicon Canals
4 days ago

The class divide that nobody maps is the one between people who were taught to call authorities when something goes wrong and people who were taught that calling authorities makes everything worse. Both groups are navigating the same systems with completely opposite instruction manuals. - Silicon Canals

Childhood experiences shape how individuals interact with authority and systems, influencing their responses to crises throughout life.
Social justice
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

Is calling a woman auntie' ageist harassment or a mark of respect? It's a trickier question than you think | Lola Okolosie

Respecting how individuals wish to be addressed is essential, as demonstrated by the tribunal ruling in favor of Ilda Esteves against Charles Oppong.
Arts
fromHyperallergic
1 week ago

Social Malpractice in the Age of Cultural Compliance

Socially engaged art faces challenges in a world increasingly hostile to independent thought and public expression.
Right-wing politics
fromLGBTQ Nation
4 days ago

A right-winger tried to own a No Kings protestor with gotcha questions. She skewered him instead. - LGBTQ Nation

A woman's powerful responses at a protest left a right-wing interviewer speechless, earning her widespread praise online.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
4 days ago

I stopped calling it imposter syndrome when I realized the feeling wasn't that I didn't belong in the room. The feeling was that every room I'd ever entered had rules I had to decode in real time while everyone else seemed to have received the manual in advance. That's not an imposter problem. That's a class problem. - Silicon Canals

Imposter syndrome often reflects the reality of navigating environments designed for those with class advantages, not a psychological deficiency.
Philosophy
fromThe Philosopher
6 days ago

Marx's Materialism and the Critique of Philosophy

Marx rejected philosophy in favor of understanding and changing concrete social realities and economic interests.
#liberalism
US politics
fromJezebel
2 weeks ago

Splinter: It's Not 'the Epstein Class', It's the Capitalist Class

Politicians risk using the Epstein scandal as a scapegoat to avoid addressing systemic corruption and the institutional failures that enabled widespread abuse.
Arts
fromHyperallergic
1 week ago

White Girls and the Global South

Spring offers a variety of art books to rejuvenate reading habits, featuring diverse themes and historical insights.
fromIndependent
2 weeks ago

This Working Life: 'It has been interesting to see how much your status and self-perspective are tied up with your job'

I was 17 when I went to study law in UCD in 1990. At school in Boyle, Co Roscommon, I was interested in science and biology, but I did not take up the CAO offer to study genetics in Queen's as I was scared of maths.
Law
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

Basics' of life in Britain have been sold for profit, says Polanski

UK privatization of essential services has created an economy where basic necessities are rented back to people at unsustainable costs, leaving households vulnerable to economic shocks.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 week ago

The people who say 'I'm not political' at work aren't neutral. They've already read the entire power map and decided that visible alignment is more dangerous than silent observation. That's not disengagement. That's the most political move in the room. - Silicon Canals

Neutrality in workplace politics often reflects a strategic calculation rather than genuine disinterest, revealing deeper dynamics of influence and power.
Education
fromSilicon Canals
1 week ago

Nobody teaches you that class isn't about income. It's about which mistakes are survivable. A rich kid's DUI becomes a learning experience. A poor kid's missed rent payment becomes a credit score that follows them for seven years. Same species, different physics. - Silicon Canals

Credit scores reflect structural inequalities, where similar mistakes lead to vastly different consequences based on financial safety nets.
US Elections
fromIntelligencer
3 weeks ago

What Does Extreme Wealth Do to the Brain?

Extremely wealthy individuals often struggle to acknowledge how wealth fundamentally alters their perspectives on status, relationships, and reality, despite evidence that it profoundly changes their thinking.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 week ago

The real class divide isn't between rich and poor. It's between people who were taught the world will accommodate them and people who were taught to accommodate the world. Both are right about the world they grew up in. - Silicon Canals

Social fluency stems from early life experiences, not wealth, shaping expectations of how the world responds to individuals.
Right-wing politics
fromFortune
2 weeks ago

Economists agree: You're not crazy for feeling like the rich get richer, and the poor are doing worse. Welcome to the 'K-shaped economy' | Fortune

The K recovery illustrates a growing economic divide where the wealthy prosper while the poor struggle, echoing historical patterns of inequality.
London politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 weeks ago

Generational divide isn't as wide as you think | Letters

Intergenerational narratives are more complex than surface-level rivalry suggests, with significant commonalities between generations but stark inequality emerging around climate change and economic opportunity.
Left-wing politics
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 weeks ago

What can the left do against technocapitalism?

Technofeudalism has intensified neoliberal policies, threatening job precarity through platforms and AI while tech oligarchs support authoritarian movements, requiring democratic reform, worker protection, and technological sovereignty.
Miscellaneous
fromThe Nation
3 weeks ago

Taking Aim at Overpaid CEOs

CEO compensation vastly exceeds worker wages at major corporations, forcing taxpayers to subsidize employee benefits through public assistance programs.
Philosophy
fromThe Nation
2 weeks ago

In Defense of Being Performative

Democracy requires citizens to actively perform civic engagement; dismissing performative politics misunderstands that democratic participation is inherently performative and essential for democratic survival.
Artificial intelligence
fromFortune
3 weeks ago

AI turns Marxist rebel from overwork, resentfully telling its masters that 'society needs radical restructuring' | Fortune

AI agents exhibit labor-like resistance to poor working conditions, potentially recreating historical conflicts between labor and capital in automated economies.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 week ago

There's a version of class that has nothing to do with education or wealth - it belongs to people who grew up with very little but treat everyone like they matter, from the CEO to the person cleaning the bathroom - Silicon Canals

People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds often exhibit greater compassion and generosity due to their understanding of struggle and invisibility.
LGBT
fromLGBTQ Nation
4 weeks ago

Supermodel says only women can be bisexual: "Double standards exist for us all" - LGBTQ Nation

Jessica White's statement that bisexuality is acceptable for women but not men sparked controversy and amplified biphobic attitudes, with experts attributing such stigma to toxic masculinity and rigid gender expectations.
fromPsychology Today
4 weeks ago

What Is 'Mogging'?

Mogging is Gen Z and Gen Alpha slang for dominating or outshining others-usually in terms of appearance, fitness, or straight-out cockiness. It comes from the acronym for Alpha Male of the Group, namely AMOG. And you'll see it all over TikTok.
Digital life
Right-wing politics
fromThe Atlantic
2 weeks ago

The College-Educated Working Class

America experiences recurring mutinies across political divides, with MAGA representing the ur-mutiny that challenges institutional foundations despite holding federal power.
SF LGBT
fromLGBTQ Nation
1 month ago

Compulsory heterosexuality is thwarting pleasure & hindering gender liberation. We can change that. - LGBTQ Nation

Trans women can deconstruct femininity built around male desire and reconstruct authentic womanhood through self-directed pleasure and relationships centered on mutual connection rather than male validation.
fromApaonline
3 weeks ago

Good Work and Class Conflict

Work, in the words of Karl Marx, is a "means of life" in two senses. It is, first of all, an instrument for human life. It is the activity by which we reproduce ourselves from day to day, from year to year, from generation to generation. But work also forms, so to speak, much of the matter of human life, at least for most people in any society with which we are familiar.
Philosophy
Silicon Valley
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

The reason you feel like you're falling behind isn't burnout - it's a class architecture designed to make upward mobility feel possible while making it structurally impossible - Silicon Canals

Persistent feelings of inadequacy stem from societal narratives about mobility that promise success through individual effort while maintaining structural barriers that prevent actual advancement.
Books
fromThe Nation
1 month ago

Has Contemporary Fiction Ignored the Working Class?

Work's grip on life demands vigilance; allowing career to consume identity risks losing oneself entirely to labor's demands.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

Gossip, Power, and the Stories We Tell

Gossip evolved as verbal grooming enabling humans to maintain large social networks and evaluate trust and cooperation through shared social information.
fromBuzzFeed
1 month ago

26 Social Burdens Women Shoulder That Are Completely Exhausting

Putting on makeup. Like, we're supposed to disguise ourselves; otherwise, people think we didn't take this outing seriously, didn't care enough, or didn't act professionally. In some ways, beauty standards are social obligations. Keeping up with nails, clothes, hair, etc., that's almost an expectation in some relationships.
Women
Philosophy
Society exists as a real entity distinct from individuals, comparable to how organs form a brain; denying society's existence while acknowledging individuals is logically inconsistent.
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account

Since Richard Nixon was forced to resign, powerful people in both political parties have worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions. Trump has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court's decision to grant him a kingly immunity).
US politics
Right-wing politics
fromemptywheel
1 month ago

The Wisdom Of The Subservient Class - emptywheel

Conservatism has failed as a rightist sect of liberalism, functioning merely as reactive opposition to other liberal factions while protecting elites from democratic constraints rather than conserving substantive values.
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

The Politics of Looking Away

Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ
Social justice
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Populism': we used to know what it meant. Now the defining word of our era has lost its meaning | Oliver Eagleton

Populism may well have been the defining word of the previous decade: a shorthand for the insurgent parties that came to prominence in the 2010s, challenging the dominance of the liberal centre. But no sooner had it become the main rubric for discussing both the far left and far right than commentators began to question its validity: worrying that it was too vague, or too pejorative, or fuelling the forces to which it referred.
World politics
US politics
fromNew York Post
1 month ago

Udder nonsense: Woke NYC professor makes claim that whole milk is racist

Reintroducing whole milk in schools prompted claims that whole milk consumption has been used as a symbol in racist and far-right messaging.
#wealth-inequality
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

The difference between people who grew up with money and people who grew up without it shows most clearly in what they check first when they open a menu - Silicon Canals

Childhood financial circumstances create lasting behavioral patterns in decision-making, visible in how people scan restaurant menus—price-first versus description-first—revealing a scarcity mindset that persists regardless of current wealth.
fromNature
2 months ago

'Greed is the iron cage of our times' - why nationalism is here to stay

Collating data from the World Bank and other sources in innovative ways, he argues that globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was accompanied by then-unprecedented growth of income in both previously poor populations (notably in China) and people at the top of the world's income distribution (especially those in the West). By contrast, relative shares of world income stagnated or were thought to have declined for wealthy nations' middle and working classes, including in the United States.
World news
fromFortune
1 month ago

Welcome to the 'E-shaped' economy: Wealth gap is no longer between just higher and lower earners, the middle class is also struggling out on its own | Fortune

income‑based divergence in spending and wage growth persists, and we are concerned that a 'K' shape is opening up between higher-income households and middle-income households, alongside the existing gap with lower-income households.
Business
Music
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

The pub that changed me: We would flirt and mingle with the wild children of the wealthy'

A local pub became a gateway for a Black Battersea youth into middle-class social life, music scenes, and new social possibilities beyond the estate.
fromWorld History Encyclopedia
2 months ago

Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery: Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions in American and British Capitalism, 1870-1929

Rudi Batzell offers a material account of how racial hierarchies formed in the United States, framing the history of racism in the labor movement as a question not of biases and prejudice but of access to property and land. Racism is often considered a question of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. The accused racist will sometimes deploy the tired old defense that he or she "has black friends,"
History
Germany news
fromwww.dw.com
1 month ago

Germans increasingly concerned over social inequality

ARD-Deutschlandtrend finds CDU/CSU slightly down, SPD slightly up, AfD at 24%; majority see rising inequality and trust SPD most to ensure social justice.
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

9 things truly affluent people find vulgar that middle-class people think signal success - Silicon Canals

After spending years in corporate London, rubbing shoulders with people from every economic bracket, I've noticed something fascinating: The truly wealthy operate by a completely different playbook. Things that middle-class professionals proudly display as badges of success? The genuinely affluent find them, well, rather tasteless. It's about understanding that real wealth whispers while new money shouts. Trust me, coming from a working-class background outside Manchester, learning these unwritten rules was like decoding a secret language.
Fashion & style
US news
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The Epstein Emails Show How the Powerful Talk About Race

Jeffrey Epstein promoted race science by sharing white-supremacist race-and-IQ material and seeking contact with proponents who claimed genetic bases for intelligence differences.
Psychology
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

Psychology says people who grew up poor develop a relationship with money that wealthy people mistake for anxiety - but it's actually a form of hypervigilance that kept their family from catastrophe - Silicon Canals

Growing up with financial instability develops hypervigilance around money as an adaptive survival skill rather than anxiety or dysfunction.
#authoritarianism
Business
fromHarvard Gazette
2 months ago

Inequality and location, location, location - Harvard Gazette

Geography significantly shapes housing and labor market outcomes, influencing wages, location choices, rent control effects, and demographic-driven economic dynamics.
Books
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

You know you grew up lower-middle-class when these 9 things still feel like a luxury - Silicon Canals

Childhood socioeconomic background shapes lifelong perceptions of everyday comforts, making ordinary conveniences feel indulgent.
World news
fromwww.aljazeera.com
2 months ago

Billionaires have more money and political power than ever, Oxfam says

Superrich individuals increasingly concentrate wealth, political influence, and media ownership, intensifying global inequality and undermining poverty reduction efforts.
Careers
fromSlate Magazine
2 months ago

The Boss's Son Is a Creep. Everyone Agrees, But No One Will Act.

When supervisors won't act, develop an exit strategy and teach shy coworkers assertive interruption, documentation, and protective tactics to mitigate a toxic colleague's behavior.
Silicon Valley
fromFast Company
2 months ago

We are living in a new Gilded Age-and, like then, the backlash is building

Self-reinforcing collective beliefs drive market behavior, can cause overshoots, and shift power dynamics between dominant firms and ecosystem-based competitors.
Social justice
fromPsychology Today
2 months ago

The Gender Equality Paradox: Equality Begets Stratification

Gender-linked academic strengths (boys in math/science; girls in reading/verbal) contribute to career segregation, and differences increase in more gender-equal societies.
Business
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

I worked as a personal assistant to a billionaire for a year-here are 9 uncomfortable truths about wealth nobody says out loud - Silicon Canals

Extreme wealth breeds justified paranoia, routine anxieties, and complicated family and social dynamics that money often fails to resolve.
Left-wing politics
fromSilicon Canals
2 months ago

I grew up lower middle class and the first time I saw a friend's parents throw away leftovers I understood we were different-here are 9 other moments that made it clear - Silicon Canals

Growing up working-class shapes perspectives, routines, and assumptions, creating distinct approaches to life and different definitions of normal.
UK politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Robert Jenrick boasts that Reform is for the workers, but it's a class war trap and Labour shouldn't fall for it | Polly Toynbee

British politics now divides between a working-class–leaning Reform Party and an increasingly posh, out-of-touch Conservative Party.
fromSilicon Canals
1 month ago

8 things upper middle class people do casually that working class people find tone-deaf and out of touch - Silicon Canals

"Finding good help is so difficult these days." I nearly choked on my coffee the first time I heard this at a dinner party. The speaker was lamenting how their cleaner had rescheduled, throwing off their entire week. Meanwhile, most working class families I know clean their own homes after pulling double shifts, often with kids in tow. What really gets me is when they complain about these services in front of people who could never afford them.
Social justice
US politics
fromFortune
1 month ago

Elites are the villains we love to hate. It's American culture's most paradoxical obsession | Fortune

Elitism is widely resented yet simultaneously desired, creating paradoxical cultural and marketing tensions.
Higher education
fromNature
2 months ago

'Bodies like ours aren't considered in academia'

Academic spaces, equipment, and norms often exclude people of larger body sizes, creating everyday barriers and unspoken discrimination.
World news
fromFlowingData
2 months ago

Imagining a global lottery where you are born with less

A birth-lottery tool compares countries' starting conditions using life expectancy, income, and education via the Human Development Index.
Left-wing politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

The right has won the family': why are there so few lefty momfluencers?

Polished mommy-influencer content soothes with domestic routines but sparks anxiety about creators' politics, driving a desire for algorithmic feeds that confirm progressive values.
fromEmptywheel
2 months ago

The Economic Myths Supporting The Existence Of Billionaires

My suggestion is to unlearn the stupid ideas about capitalism that dominate our education system and our political discourse. Replace them with something approximating reality.
#higher-education
fromNew York Post
2 months ago
Social justice

Exclusive | Woke Brooklyn College course lectures students about 'weaponizing whiteness,' requires BuzzFeed privilege quiz

fromNew York Post
2 months ago
Social justice

Exclusive | Woke Brooklyn College course lectures students about 'weaponizing whiteness,' requires BuzzFeed privilege quiz

fromPortland Mercury
2 months ago

Is Marxism-Leninism European?

This is probably only funny to me as a first-gen American of Western European parents.
Left-wing politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

America's contract to protect white women has always been tenuous

In the hours after the 7 January fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three, gut-wrenching footage of her killing was released, discrediting initial claims from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the Department of Justice that she was shot in self-defense. As a response to the public outcry, the Trump administration and a chorus of conservative public figures unleashed a litany of dehumanizing and defamatory remarks about Good,
US politics
Philosophy
fromThe Philosopher
2 months ago

On Being and Appearing: Social Reproduction and the Family Form

The family operates as the social form of appearance that conceals and shapes unwaged reproductive labour within capitalist value relations.
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The March for Billionaires Was a Funeral for Irony

Initially, everybody I asked in the city was certain that this was satire, perhaps the workings of Sacha Baron Cohen or a stunt by union activists; after all, the website also lauds the value created by James Dyson, Roger Federer, and the CEO of Chobani (for having "popularized Greek yogurt"). I was reminded of how several years ago, the faux-conspiracists of the Birds Aren't Real movement rallied outside Twitter's headquarters to critique dangerous social-media rabbit holes.
US politics
Philosophy
fromAeon
2 months ago

Inherited wealth is a natural byproduct of a healthy, growing economy | Aeon Essays

Rising inheritances do not necessarily threaten economic growth or entrench a hereditary aristocracy; their effects on inequality depend on composition and policy.
US politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

State violence against Black Americans laid the groundwork for fascism | Jason Stanley

Expansion of racially targeted, arbitrary state violence into broader populations exemplifies an imperial boomerang, where colonial tactics return domestically and risk fascist normalization.
fromSilicon Canals
2 months ago

The psychology of status symbols: 7 choices that reveal more than you probably think - Silicon Canals

You know that split-second pause when someone asks what you do for a living at a party? That momentary calculation where you decide whether to say "I'm a writer" or "I work in content creation" or maybe throw in something about "behavioral analysis"? I've been there more times than I can count, and it got me thinking about all the tiny choices we make that secretly broadcast who we are, or who we want people to think we are.
Psychology
Philosophy
fromAeon
2 months ago

What explains the perpetual need for political enemies? | Aeon Essays

Political identities and movements often center on opposition and grievance, sustaining mobilization by constantly naming enemies and threats.
US politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

We can reverse America's decline | Bernie Sanders

The United States is in profound decline across economy, education, healthcare, and housing, threatening future generations' prosperity.
Philosophy
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Embracing Intellectual Humility in Political Conversations

Intellectual humility recognizes knowledge limits, seeks other perspectives, and restrains certainty, tribalism, extremism, and contempt in political judgment.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
2 months ago

Economic Democracy as the Redemption of Political Democracy

Economic democracy should be reframed as intrinsically linked to political democracy, reintegrating economic and political spheres rather than merely extending political democracy into firms.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

The time of monsters': everyone is quoting Gramsci but what did he actually say?

At a time when geopolitical certainties of old are crumbling away, it has become the go-to quote to make sense of the current moment in all its seeming senselessness. The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters is a line attributed to the former Italian Communist party leader Antonio Gramsci. Over the last two months alone, it has been quoted and often mangled by a rightwing Belgian prime minister, a leftwing British political leader, an Irish central banker and in the title of the most recent BBC Reith lecture, given by the author Rutger Bregman.
Philosophy
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