Class war solves most issues
(midwest.social)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/51623256
It's funny how he (a university professor from uk) is very probably part of that 10%, but writes as if implied he's not lol. The people in rich countries has really no notion of how rich they are when compared with the rest of the world.
Also, I see that a lot of people around here seem to identify themselves in the top 10%. maybe that explains how I (low-income person from the third world) feel so detached from the community, especially in topics related to tech, as if we lived in different worlds. Well, maybe I really live in a different world than most around...
"In the United States (EU27), the top 10% contribute 3.1 (2.8) times more to global warming than the average citizen, but 17 (8) times more than the global average"
Top 10% is a salary of about 155,000 for an individual or 210,000 for US household. Obviously industrialized countries like China, US, India, Russia, etc admit much higher than the global average.
Please state your approx. income and country so we judge you now.
So burn the rich.
10%, chances are very good that you're it.
Not that it matters much, postfossil indefinitely sustainable planetary population is a lot less than one billion, perhaps as low as 100 million. It would be just 500000 if we were a just another species our size.
In 1800 the global population was a bit over 1billion.
Yes, we haven't been longterm sustainable even since preindustrial times. Worse, the carrying capacity after all is sung and done will be a lot lower than the preindustrial one.
This. And it's 10% by income and not 10% by wealth. If you are even in the 2% of income ($180k/y), you're basically a wageslave with a chance not to retire in time
One thing to keep in mind here is that "the wealthiest 10%" includes everyone in the western world who makes even a dollar above the median income. Global warming is a far bigger problem than just a couple billionaires. You could abolish billionaires and convert everything to employee owned collectives or something, and the energy use problems will still exist unchanged.
No. Instead of just saying things, you could look up the study and see:
- percentage are broken out globally and by nation
- in Fig.2 that the top 0.1% has attributable GMT increase roughly equal to all others combined
- many other things that question your final assertion, which doesn't even logically flow from what you did say
It's weird to see someone here homering for billionaires and getting lots of upvotes. It doesn't take an advanced degree to recognize that commuting via private jet and owning a yacht to carry your smaller yacht is disproportionately bad for the environment. The really crazy part is that your last two sentences are accurate (though possibly a bit misleading) sans the last word, "unchanged", which makes them total bullshit.
Two seconds worth of googling gives me 15.6 million tons of CO2 from private flights, vs 3.35 billion tons from cars.
In a situation where the only metric that actually matters is absolute output, we need to keep focus on the fact that the problem is far bigger than just what a couple hyper rich douchebags are doing. You can kill all billionaires tomorrow and redistribute their wealth to the poorest people, and none of the climate problems will go away because the problem is bigger than them.
couple hyper rich douchebags are doing
it's not just about the individual carbon footprints of each billionaire, it's about the cumulative effect of the inefficiencies which billionaires propagate globally. for example, why is the US government currently doubling down on fossil fuels? duh, because a handful of billionaires and hundred millionaires are pushing have captured decision making in Washington. they own the legislative and executive branches outright. so instead of rule by meritocracy or rule by the smartest or the most democratic process, the whole global economy is forced to bend to the selfish desires of a few whale investors. entire sectors of the economy are being raised up or suppressed not because they are efficient or counteract climate change, but because an oligarch wishes it so.
Now do gamers vs AI datacenters.
Neither of those things inherently emits CO2, so the comparison is not particularly useful. A data center in Quebec, will have will have less overall emissions than one gamer in Florida, based purely on the nature of the power grid in each location.
Getting rid of the slop factories would be a net positive for a whole host of other reasons, but that's a somewhat different discussion.
Ok, probably it's the article title. You can't make it worse if all you state is true
One thing to keep in mind here is that "the wealthiest 10%" includes everyone in the western world who makes even a dollar above the median income.
I don't think that's accurate. Combining the total populations of the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand gives you about 923 million people, which is about 11.12% of the world population.
And unless you mean to suggest that 89.92% of the people in those countries make above the median income, which is mathematically impossible, then your statement cannot be true.
Not to mention, this calculation neglects the fact that billionaires and hundred-millionaires exist outside of western countries, assuming all higher-than-median earners in the world are westerners. Which is false.
And, income is a bad indicator for this because the wealthiest 10% is calculated by assets, not income. Most of them don't have any "income" because they make all their money via capital gains.
So no, you're completely losing sight of the problem. Median-income-earners don't constantly fly around in private jets and own datacenters that they power with jet fuel. They don't own coal plants or oil refineries. Their carbon footprint is miniscule compared to the 10% discussed in this post.
The global population is 8.3 billion. So the top 10% is 830 million people. Global median income is somewhere around $3000, depending on how you calculate it.
The point is, if you are a middle class person in a developed country, there is a very good chance that the top 10% includes you.
The global population is 8.3 billion. So the top 10% is 830 million people. Global median income is somewhere around $3000
Yes, I factored that into my calculations. 923m is 11.12% of 8.3b; 830m is 89.9% of 923m. Show me where I'm wrong.
Also, if the global median income is $3000, that means a person making $3001 is in the 50th percentile, not the 10th. Try again.
The point is, if you are a middle class person in a developed country, there is a very good chance that the top 10% includes you.
Nope, this is about the top 10% by wealth, not by income. Lots of people who make $3000 have zero or negative net worth. And most billionaires have very little measurable income because of the way they cook their books with legal loopholes.
Trying to make this about income instead of wealth is fundamentally misguided and misinformed.
Wealth vs income is an irrelevant distinction when you are talking about the top 10% globally. The point I'm making is that a middle class person in a developed country is likely to be in the top 10% globally by either measure. The problem is vastly larger than just what a couple billionaires are doing, no matter how much the rest of us want to pretend we aren't part of the problem.
Wealth vs income is an irrelevant distinction when you are talking about the top 10% globally.
No it's not.
The point I'm making is that a middle class person in a developed country is likely to be in the top 10% globally by either measure.
That's the part that's not relevant to this discussion.
The problem is vastly larger than just what a couple billionaires are doing, no matter how much the rest of us want to pretend we aren't part of the problem.
And yet the whole point of this post is that climate change is being disproportionally caused by the wealthiest people. A key part of the background to that is how the impetus to solve global warming has been placed on the consumers for decades.
"Recycle. Drive less. Use less A/C. Stop using disposable plastics. Take less baths." When in many places, modern life has been designed such that many of those things are unavoidable in modern society (by capitalist oligarchs, funny that).
Not that we shouldn't try to do those things to the best of our ability. We should. But for most of us, keeping a perfect track record is not only impossible, but it adds an enormous amount of stress which leads to burnout and callousness, and any given person's individual contribution to minimizing their contributions to global warming will be comparatively tiny, no matter how good they do it.
How much of a dent will it really make when you have corporate office buildings that run A/C on full blast even at night when nobody is there, or during the day with windows open because people can't control the temperatures in their offices and it gets too cold for some people? Likewise with heating in the winter.
The problem is systemic and needs to be addressed at the systemic level, starting with the biggest contributors (corporations and billionaires).
Pretending this is a middle class problem that the middle class needs to solve is only doing the billionaires' work of obfuscation, gaslighting, and manipulation for them.
I repeat, no individual working-class person's efforts to slow or reverse climate change will ever be enough to achieve it.
True. But if the largest economy in the world wasn't actively trying to sabotage green solutions and promote oil use and environmental destruction as a result of billionaires' influence, it would be a big plus.
As if the employee-owned fossil fuel syndicates and weapons manufacturer syndicates and car manufacturer syndicates and road construction syndicates and plastic processing syndicates wouldn't be trying to sabotage green solutions just as hard. As if the warehouse logistics syndicate couldn't use its monopsony to bully manufacturing syndicates into making the shittiest products for them and their monopoly to get those shitty product to the masses. And as if a liberal democracy like the US wouldn't be just as corruptible by these syndicates resulting in the state actively trying to sabotage green projects as well.
There is no reason for employee-owned syndicates to be more of a force for good outside the workplace than pension funds. Most workers with even the slightest profit motive invest in weapons for genocide, pollution for profit, and housing as a speculative form of income. If a syndicate was bad for the environment, that syndicate would fight to continue existing as long as it was profitable for the employees to do so.
Don't get me wrong, it's nice that the employees get their fair share of the blood money. But capitalism redistributes wealth from the kind to the selfish whether they're individuals, corporations, or syndicates.
Only one way to find Out. But Something tells me a certain group of guilty people is fighting tooth and nail we wont ever truly find out...
Ooh, what way is that? Theoretical material analysis? Small-scale trials? National-scale trials? Polls? Analogies to the real world?
Oh, you want the entire world to engage in a violent revolution to overthrow the powers that be so we can hand all that power over to the employees of a couple multinationals?
If every Corporation should allow Unionization that would be start. Everything else comes after step 5.
The global 10% income threshold is about $70k.
Just so we are clear the global population is about 8.3billion. So there are about 830million in the top 10%. The US has a population of 340million, the EU of 450million and there are some other countries like the UK or Canada. Then there are some rich countries like South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and so forth, which also have large populations. Also obviously there are plenty of rich people in poor countries as well. Especially China will make up a good chunk of the global top 10%, just for being upper middle income and a country with a huge population.
In other words it is not being above median income in the West, but somewhat above that.
Median household income was $83,730 in 2024
That's going to include dual income households as well as single income, so the $70k threshold for being in the top 10% may actually include some people below median, depending on what the distribution of single vs dual income households happens to be.
Point being, since we're being pedantic today, is that being anywhere above median income in a developed nation means you are likely in the global top 10%.
Yeah.... the Median individual income is only 45k. So it kinda depends if the 70k threshold was accounting for household or single. If it's just a single income then around 75% of Americans would not make it to the top 10%.
Household income is kinda a skewed way to evaluate income, especially considering that a lot of households do not share expenses equally. Younger generations could have 5 roommates and not make the 85k median.
Oh by "western world" you meant the US and not developed country or european culture country.
If there is no need for profit there will be no need for infinite growth on a finite planet.
No need to push people new phones every year so their old one goes into the trash, etc etc
True and I was going to post something similar. One thing to keep in mind though is that the abolition of billionaires or more broadly speaking the capitalist class would enable the possibility of a totally different economy where profits are no longer the only goal. This could result in a more efficient way of doing things and therefore drastically reduce our negative impact on nature.
The capitalist class aren't cartoon villains; they're normal people. Changing the system to get rid of them isn't going to magically get rid of the human preference for the easier path. People aren't going to just suddenly wholesale agree to take the long view and do things the more expensive, but more environmentally friendly way. And when I say "more expensive" I don't mean the added expense of corporate greed. Even after you take out that factor, a lot of the expense comes from the simple difference in energy density.
They absolutely are. The reason we're in this climate crisis is because oil companies knew this would happen and a handful of executives chose profits over our future. Had exxon been worker owned you'd need a majority of the company to choose greed and actively run disinformation campaigns. Even the current AI boom wouldn't be so insane because you'd need the majority of Nvidia to deliberately inflate the bubble through circular investments. It would've reduced the ram crisis by not letting the big three price fix the price of ram and then artificially create scarcity by selling off future ram production. It would also be very unlikely there would be someone to sell the future ram production because the majority of an AI company would have to be convinced to buy up non-existent ram with with non-existent money because "if we don't do it our competitors will". Getting rid of capitalists and and putting the workers in charge of the company instantly increases the number of assholes necessary for the company to make an asshole decision.
The argument that getting rid of capitalists wouldn't magically change the system is like making an argument that getting rid of kings won't solve all our problems. It didn't, but it got us democracy which did end up making everything less shit. Getting rid of capitalists and putting the companies in the hands of the employees wouldn't instantly fix anything but it would prevent future shit from happening. Had it been done 60 years ago we might not even have a climate crisis. If we do it today we're not going to save us from the AI bubble but we might save up from the next "once in a lifetime economic bubble" that will end up further ruining our planet.
I don't think anyone is claiming that removing capitalism would magically make environmentally friendly choices effortless or eliminate human preferences for convenience. The point is that the system determines what gets treated as the "easy" and "cheap" option in the first place. If an economic system rewards short-term returns while externalizing long-term environmental costs, then of course the dirty option tends to win. That's a structural issue, not a question of whether individual capitalists are cartoon villains. Physical constraints are real, but they're not an argument for treating the current economic incentives as inevitable.
I think you may be extrapolating in the wrong direction from my comments.
My main point isn't that the status quo is inevitable or anything like that. I'm trying to keep people focused on the whole problem, not just "eat the rich" type sloganeering. It's going to be a multiple generation endeavor to fix the environment, even if we magically started doing all the right things now. If we keep keep presenting it as something that can be solved by just getting rid of the rich, we're going to run into a whole new batch of problems when that doesn't work.
Yeah, I think we're mostly on the same page about it not being as simple as "get rid of the rich and problem solved."
Where I think we differ is that I see capitalism itself as probably the biggest hurdle. Not because people in capitalism are inherently bad but because the system's incentives are fundamentally at odds with living sustainably. I don't think changing that magically solves everything but I do think it's a prerequisite for solving the problem in the long run.
10% of income is basically $70k/y. If you're above this line - you are the problem
It is more complex then that. For example somebody earning over $70k/y might easily live car free and vegan in Paris, while not flying on vacation. Part of that is individual choice like living vegan and other parts are part of the system around that person, like the amazing public transit in Paris or that the French electricity grid is nearly emissions free. Somebody like that might well have carbon footprint below the global average.
In the end it is a systems problem. A well designed system should not allow people to harm others on a scale like that. But individuals do have agency and those with $70k/y more then most. If those individuals make good choices, then they might well be part of the solution and not the problem.
Yes and no. It is possible for someone earning 70k/year to emit below the average (let's also keep in mind that the goal is not to be below the average, but to be at 0 emissions/impact), but everything you can buy has a CO2/environment-cost related to it.
As soon as you spend more, you have a higher impact. Of course there are more and less impactful ways of consumption, so you do raise a good point, but we're not going to consume our way out of this misery.
A really nice book I shove down the throat of every single one of my friends who's not running away fast enough is The Day the World Stops Shopping, in case you have way too much time at hand ^^
Also 70K net or gross is quite a big difference.
Also me not having kids and commuting using an EV that’s charged at almost entirely by solar/nuclear means I am well below that threshold.
Where I live district heating also comes from geothermal heat.
Yay! I'm not part of it!
Granted plenty of people who earn less than me have far worse impacts on climate and some people who make more may be doing better. Like someone in NYC making much more than me might be causing less emissions just because better public transit and all their money just goes into rent. Meanwhile, someone in Texas who eats beef regularly, drives 20+ miles in their truck most days, etc could easily be worse while making significantly less.
Guys, if you're in "developed" countries and you're at least 1.5x above the poverty line, you're included in the global 10%. This smells like greenwashing the ultra-rich's effect, rather than showcasing it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02325-x
Top 1% is responsible for 20% of emissions and are 20x more responsible than the average person.
This is a core component of the class war.
For all of history the ruling class have granted a minority of the proles a privileged life, who will play ball and defend their privileged position from the majority (uncle toms, lords, landowners, managers, lobbyists, politicians, even most CEO's).
Most of the richest 10-1% in the developing world earned their wealth through labor, and simply bought property or invested in retirement funds at the right time. They are still pawns, and not the ruling class decision makers — mostly born into so much wealth that they never had to work a day in their lives — who control corporations, political parties, military and geopolitical actions. They are the ones who own the media and propaganda machines, finance the class and culture wars, corrupt our political and democratic institutions, and have prevented our transition away from fossil fuels for 50+ years. Hell most of the 1-0.1% are not decision makers; probably successful doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, entertainers, etc.
This should have been the headline.
Guys, if you’re in “developed” countries and you’re at least 1.5x above the poverty line, you’re included in the global 10%
17% of the global population lives in developed countries and there are plenty of rich people in developing countries too.
The so called middle class was created so that a portion of the working class would have enough wealth to consume products at a rate necessary to fuel the ongoing growth of the economy. In fulfilling this function (partly due to the influence of marketing propaganda), the middle class is also complicit. Not as complicit, but still.
Yes, very good. I think the people responsible for the decisions that lead us here should be held to account before those who passively participated, but I read you loud and clear.
Now let's look at Who those 10% of world population are:
Right! mostly Americans and our rich westener friends. propably contributing 100 times more than a fella from Zimbabwe does.
800 million people in that 10% but "yep it's all the Americans faults!" lmao
Unless it is a rich Zimbabwean. Then it's probably them. It's about purchasing power and ability to buy air fare and cars etc.
It's very easy to point at and blame others. We can all contribute to solving the problem.
If you can cycle rather than drive to work, the planet thanks you whether you're in Michigan or Nairobi.
This is why I support carbon taxes
We need build a world where everyone is equally responsible for global warming. It's only fair.
There's already fair distribution, the top 10% cause most of climate change while the bottom 10% will reap most of its rewards!
True trickle ~~down economics~~ up consequences
So we should do something about it
And see bootlickers still defend the billionaires saying they worked hard and therefore deserved to do however with their wealth.
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
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