Why You're NOT "Middle Class" Second Thought Reaction 

15:07, that's a bit of a complicated question but here it goes, (note: I an assuming in this scenario that your primary source of income is youtube) if you own your own channel and work it yourself without an editor or script wigher of the like, you are working class, your income comes from your labor allon . If you own a large youtube channel where others do some or most the work for you, you are petty bourgeoise (small business owner) you do work, but a part of your income comes from others labor. If you own a large youtube conglomerate where others do all of the work for you, you are a capitalist, nearly all of your income comes from exploiting the labor of others.

"I am not looking down on "lower class"" and "a lot of people choose to be homeless" dont really go that well together ngl XD

Hi Bryson, good to see you again in a video.👍👍 The Netherlands use the instrument called "koopkracht" (translates to Buying Capacity) for its citizens and is controlled by the government. It expesses the level where people can live a decent live with their income. If inflation goes up for some reason, the koopkracht will drop. The government will take any kind of measurement to 'repair' the koopkracht to it former level, like lower taxes for workers or higher taxes for business that make more profit, or whatever is needed. If the productivity of the whole country increases the koopkracht will increase for everyone. Doing so, people are protected against economic forces they can't control themselves, like higher prices or lower wages.

1) Glad to see you back with a new video. 2) Glad to see you covering another Second Thought video. 3) First time I’m first.

I'm not an expert by any means but I feel like the common thought for your question about RU-vidrs/influencers being in the owner class or the working class is that they are much closer to owning their means of production and are much less alienated from their labor then most of the working class but tend to still have profits extracted from them from whichever social media sites they drive income from. It could probably be argued that big influencers would be considered petite bourgeoisie (akin to lawyers and doctors). Ultimately a large portion of influencer profit is extracted from their labor so even if they are millionaires or richer they are still working class.

I know this video is a bit old now, but I happen to speak "political" and I get what they meant by "being taught to dislike the lower class." Firstly it doesn't imply that everyone does this, so your personal experience and the experience of your social circle may differ completely. They are referencing how your two political parties "weaponize" the term middle class and they didn't explain it very well. While the liberal side tends to use it as sort of a scare tactic that you should be afraid of "falling from grace" so to speak; becoming poor literally, and that they intend to save the "middle class" from this, the conservatives use it another way. They tend to look down on the less fortunate and say that they simply aren't trying hard enough, et cetera, while obviously also most criminals are criminals because of economic instability in their lives. They sow a divide with unclear borders, the net result being indirectly teaching to fear people of lower economical standing; of course with the aim of making you agree with their less liberal policies. What you referenced, the language that teaches people to view themselves as temporarily dealing with an issue, not actually being poor, is directly a part of a mindset that serves the parties; an attempt to teach people to view themselves as belonging to a higher class. Thus they hope people will as a result vote from that point of view. It can serve the Democrats to get you to vote to save yourselves from becoming poor, or the Republicans in getting you to think you belong with them. Regardless it serves the establishment if people have a positive outlook on their situation and thus be pacified; less likely to attempt to rock the boat. That being said; there is nothing wrong with having a positive mindset of course. It is just prudent to know how certain mindsets can be used against you.

If you are paid a regular salary, you should join a Labor Union of a kind that negotiates with the employer for all employees' pay and working-conditions. If you don't produce your own food and it is possible: join a buyers free cooperative or support a small farmers production cooperative. If possible buy from such cooperative and other fair trade producers. Politically support those who have ideas and suggestions that would promote an equal and safe society, to not exclude those who have met with difficulties. If you feel rich rather than poor, feel solidarity with those who struggle with their living conditions. All in all be a person who solves problems. There is no reason to look down upon anybody or up to anybody because of money.

The real distinction is whether you earn your income through work, or through the work/rent of others. A RU-vidr who makes their income off the content they produce may make vastly more than I do as a typical worker, but they are still a worker. My definition of class means that I am on the same team with all workers, regardless of how much or how little they make. And I would 2nd the suggestion by the commenter below to check out Yugopnik. His videos might be a little challenging to certain beliefs, but are nevertheless fantastic.

Now that you've done second thought so much it'd be really beneficial to check out his buddies Hakim and Yugopnik. They also make amazing educational content.

Hi Bryson, good to see you!! Interesting video... I understand his arguments, but they don't 'fly' the same way in Europe. Over here paying taxes will tell you, where you lie financially, whether you are in the lower middle - middle - upper middle class tax bracket. What you do with the remaining funds, will reveal where you truly lie on that same scale...saving/living sparcely can make a difference after 5, 10, 20 yrs. - so can overextending yourself! If time flies by too quickly, let me say, 🎄☃️ Glædelig Jul, til dig og dine 📯🇩🇰 hello from Denmark 🌸 ❄️

14:39 in that sense you are working class because technically you put labor into your job and earn money from RU-vid (who take a cut of your ad revenue). So no matter how much you earn as a RU-vidr you're working (putting labor) to make a living

youtuber is working class, you work by making content for youtube

If you are a youtuber and only you do all the work, you are working class, no matter how much money you get paid for it. But, if you are a youtuber that hires other people to do the work for a salary, you are owner class, in this particular case; the youtuber owns the channel, which basically functions as an intellectual private property to earn money with it (capital), most likely the youtuber would still be working, but that is like an owner of a company that also works as a CEO, the only thing that would change this scenario is if you get to split all the profit earn by the channel with all the pepole that works for the channel for ever, like paying royalties based on how much work they have put into the video that is giving money, this is hard but possible, in fact it is a real mechanism call cooperatives, it is like all the people working for the channel bein owner of the channel itself, in that regard everyone in the team would still be working class, none of you are making money on behalf on anyones work so by definition all the money the team would be earning (even in the millions) would still be made solely by working, socialist societies would have no reason to oppose to this idea, some of the money got from the cooperative would still be taking as taxes and everyone else should be able to join the project getting compensated depending of their work.

The way the society teach us to despise the lower class is by labelling as lazy, opportunistic and straightforward ignorant by choice. It is not that simple, the narratives in the media, the church, schools and family meetings are not that easy to see, it is not impossible but to be honest is a hard job we need to do in order to reach the level of awareness of such messages. E.g. aspirationalism is actually also a counterforce for the poverty emphaty, instead of inviting you to take a look at other people who dont have their basic needs provided, it only gives you the idea of how cool would be to make that much money.

To your question on youtubers being working class or capitalist class, it depends on a variety of things, unfortunately this is a bit more complicated so I will try to go through everything that matters and keep it simple. Capitalists make money through the work others due via investments, owning companies, housing, owning the means of production like the workplace, or the machines being used to work. Working class make money by using their own work to get something in return, nowdays it's pretty much always a wage. You can have a person who owns a house and makes income from the rent someone pays him, this is income he makes by exploiting another persons work, and then he can still work as an engineer himself and make money through his own work. I don't think people who try to own one house especially for their retirement are inherently evil, I think the system needs to be changed so that people don't need to exploit others for their work. Now with youtubers, musicians etc, it's a very interesting concept, because there are different ways of looking at it, one is that you produce a good, a song, or a video, which you put online for no cost, no one pays you for it. Now, if you were to get all of your income from sponsorships and advertisements, you would likely be more on the capitalist side of things, because most of your income will likely come from companies that can afford to sponsor and advertise, which usually means they have a capitalist, or few capitalists at the head, who will also be doing work for the company, just like the person who can work as an engineer and also make money from a house. If you work as a channel and make no money from sponsorships and advertisements at all, but only through direct donations and perhaps patreon, or patreon like systems, then you are not putting out your video for free and getting revenue from sponsors, but you are essentially getting a wage from the people who tune into your video/stream, more similar to buying a ticket for a football game. This would not be exploitative to the worker inherently, since you are putting in a lot of work to make a video and then release it, however, it now depends on how much you sell this good for. If you make thousands or tens of thousands of dollars working hard, but ultimately not harder than a miner or janitor lets say, you would need to figure out how much you can justifiably ask others to pay. This means you won't become a capitalist if you ask for more money than you've put in work, but it means you will be ripping other people off. The difference here is that you are not making anyone work for more than you pay them while taking the extra, which is what divides capitalists and working class, you'd simply ask for a higher price than your work. The reason this difference is important is because only work can increase the overall value circulating in the economy. A person needs to produce something so the entire economy grows. Exchanging something that has already been made for more money than it is worth doesn't mean you've produced more money than usually, it means you've produced however much the video is worth, given it to the economy, and taken more money in return, but the overall economy that includes you and your viewer stays as a zero sum game. Maybe your video was worth 5000$, you've made 10000$ off it, but in the end the total value is still 15000$. This is different when you make someone work for more than you payed them, if you pay a worker to make a video for 4000$, but the video is worth 5000$ your investment was 4000$ into the economy, and the economy should be worth 8000$ across both sides, but because you withheld some of the value when paying your worker, you created 1000$ in the economy, you now have a video worth 5000$ and only payed 4000$, so the overall amount of value has grown.

There is no middle class. There’s working class or capitalist class.

Hi Bryson - missing your thoughtful content videos! Hope you are fine, only taking a break because you have fallen in love or something nice! 🙂 Here comes a link to a good talk for a rather more right-leaning thought, which is anyways so warm that I really like it: maybe you would make a quick reaction to it, which I am not capable of myself... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-frmwfMTRg-Q.html Hope you are returning to your channel soon, or has RU-vid forgotten that I am a subscriber!?!? All the best always!

Bryson you are alive😃 How is the car coming?

The "class" in middle class is different from "class" in working class, capitalist class, ruling class, slave class, etc. Middle class is based on arbitrary set amount of income/assets/investments that one have, while the other classes are based on their economic and social relationships with one another.

Yeah, I just waited for the Marxist definition of class - who owns the means of (industrial) production? It has always made a muddle, because of for example selfemployed craftspeople, artists, and farmers. So we absolutely need the income-range and track spending/living habits, too. It is no easy theoretical and practical question. Nevertheless it is a good question. Especially to keep an eye on the most affluent and those who struggle the most. It can also help somewhat with realizing why and how the differences in material well-being occur. It can also help with ideas to construct solutions. Now I'm in the middle of the video, so need to watch more! Good choice = interesting as always, Bryson!

2nd thought is full of himself with the fancy editing and channel where he rides expensive cars

I've seen this video before, so while I'm not quite to the end, I know where it's going. I think it missed the point that there *are* three classes of earner. 1) the working class, who only work for a living. 2) the capitalist class, who solely earn income from the work of others. And 3) the middle class who both work for a living and have investments providing additional income. And of course on top of that you have people in fulltime education, people who are unable to work, and people who have retired. So yeah, more than three classes even with this different categorisation. As for RU-vidrs who don't have day jobs: they are in the capitalist class. They may do what could be called "work", but it's not for someone else. They effectively own a company that employs one person - themselves. (Of course, bigger RU-vid productions may employ others, but that merely reinforces the idea that the channel owners are not working class - but their employees are.)

If you are concerned about unemployment, then I can recommend a vivid movie that makes the relationships on the global market clear, through highlighting the case of Jamaica, here's a clip from "Life and Debt" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UzYGaFv1ryo.html money doesn't trickle down as much as it is sucked upwards in an international "network arrangement" or whatever it is called.