all rental units¶

Mind you, half of all rental units are owned by "mom-and-pop" landlords who own 1-4 rental properties. These units are largely rented out to low-income people -- "proletarian workers" being exploited by "bourgeois workers." https://t.co/SBlUULFaTq The US market for domestic labor (childcare, housecleaning, yard work, etc.) currently sits at $30,000,000,000/year, and is rapidly growing, almost entirely due to the growth of labor aristocrat wealth. Hundreds of billions more are spent on food delivery. Of course, that consumption isn't a strict bourgeois-proletarian relationship, in that the purchaser of the labor isn't using it to directly generate more capital. Instead, the labor is used to free up their time, allowing them to work for much better pay and generate wealth. That wealth is largely built in the form of real estate, buying more and more property to either sell at a profit (which requires a constantly inflating housing market) or rent out (again, causing them to benefit from higher housing costs). They also do use their superwages to purchase capital, in the form of stock. The wealthiest 10% of the US population -- EXCLUDING the "super-rich" top 1% -- own 40% of all stocks. That's 30 million people holding $25 trillion in capital (plus another $33 trillion in real estate). Another 130 million Americans collectively hold $48 trillion in wealth.

There is a very sharp divide between exploiter and exploited in just this country, let alone the whole world. The imperial system allows and incentivizes the highest wage earners to be mini-capitalists. The empire invests immense force to police the global underclass, including millions of people within its borders, enforcing this arrangement. The whims and interests of the global top 10% -- among them 60% of the US population -- are the driving force of the capitalist system.