Re: <nettime> 99%? 66% is more like it

[martin hardie <martin.hardie@gmail.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I wonder if we are thinking about these percentiles the wrong way?

I will try and dig it out but I am thinking about something in Empire,
and am reading it as such -the 1% -99% is not a matter of our income
level, or relative wealth as such, but refers to our position as being
under capital. Whether or not (and this is not a statement in self
defence for in the last 3 years I have had a decent income for the
first time in my life) we earn X or Y the question is better posed as
whether or not we are a part of that small percentage that constitutes
the 'owners' of the flows of global capital. In this sense we are in
the main still the proletariat-vogel frei-homo sacer.

Of course wealth distribution is an issue (as is debt) but the reality
of it is that something very close to 99% of us live under/before
capital and are subject to the whims of the 1% and the (greek) gods
of the market who seem to only ever wake up angry and only ever want
to make their anger felt on the people (today Plutus is angry with
Papandreou and pestilence shall be inflicted on the people).

Martin



On 3 November 2011 23:58, Rebecca Zorach <rezorach@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> What reality is this 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3 analysis based on? I am sure I
> am a particularly radicalized member of that top 33% (my household
> income places me at the 83rd percentile of American households) but
> I would think part of the point is that people like me, who are the
> ones you'd think this capitalist system would be working for, are
> still struggling.


<...>




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