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Notes -
Well first, we need to ask who the DSA are.
The core of the DSA, which solidly outvotes basically everyone else in their membership, is basically people in first tier cities, with graduate degrees, earning under about $65k/yr. For non Americans, the sort of person who is capable of earning a masters degree normally obtains $65k/yr in compensation through normal advancement in conventional employment by the time they would have earned a masters degree, even for non-college workers, in first or second tier cities- and college degree holders tend to make more. So we’re basically talking about people who are paid significantly less than the market rate for their qualifications. There’s a stereotype of them working in the educational system, but that would be a raise for most of them(teachers make more for having masters)- they’re mostly underemployed. Add to that that they’re living in first tier cities, which are more expensive, and often have substantial student debt(yes, lots of grad school is funded, but many of these people either get the unfunded version or exceed the limits of their funding). So we’re talking about people who are embarrassed by their class position- their purchasing power is very low, and the expectations in their social circles are very high.
Fundamentally, what they want is for the government to come in and fix that. They want welfare to expand to cover people like them(the American welfare state is substantial but mostly need based, and ‘I don’t want a real job’ isn’t a need- if they were parents earning that amount they would have free healthcare, be eligible for subsidized apartments, get food stamps, etc. But underemployed single adults are not covered). They want their student loans forgiven to put hundreds of extra dollars in their pocket every month. They want, as a stretch goal, status markers distributed based on their idea of virtue, not on ability to pay(or virtue as perceived by private clubs). They want to apply to live in cool apartments in hip neighborhoods and receive heavily discounted rent because they’re awesome. They want to be able to go on international vacations every year because they deserve it, not because they can afford it. They somewhat notoriously want to be able to DoorDash without thinking about it, because their class peers mostly can, and dammit they’re entitled to the normal petty luxuries of their cadre.
Now here’s the kicker- entitlement of a certain class of people to a comfortable lifestyle at societal expense- without them needing to personally do anything useful- isn’t exactly new. Historically we called them nobles and defined them by birth. But the DSA doesn’t want to conceptualize themselves that way. They want to restructure the economy around making them, personally, more comfortable, without really needing to think about what that actually means. They have fellow travelers who are simply misinformed about the state of America- they believe that there are millions of children without healthcare because their parents can’t afford it, for example- in reality, most children in the USA already have their health insurance paid for by the government, and the reminder come from parents wealthy enough to pay the premiums. But upper class people often don’t have the specific knowledge to realize these DSA narratives are propaganda to justify their entitlement campaign.
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