Glorious Hong Kong wrote:To woke "liberals", working-class people are lazy, racist, violent, low-information, uneducated, conspiracy-mongering, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, buck-toothed, trailer-trash hillbillies, far-right neo-Nazi domestic terrorists, treasonous insurrectionists, and an existential threat to democracy.
To conservatives, working-class people are lazy, irresponsible, hedonistic, nihilistic, violent, godless, mindless, savage, animalistic, atheist criminals, looters, rioters, unpatriotic, radical "socialists", domestic terrorists, and a parasitic burden on society who ought to either "pull up their bootstraps" or starve.
To communists, working-class people are a means to seize total power and eliminate their rivals at all costs. The end result is increased poverty and mass starvation in some cases, and extreme inequality and discrimination against working-class people by a tiny minority of extremely rich, extremely connected communist party princelings in others.
To fascists, a particular subset of working-class people are a means to seize total power and eliminate their rivals at all costs. The end result is a superficial and highly stagnant "social safety net" for poor people of the "right" background and scapegoating, slavery, and/or extermination of those of the "wrong" background. Prostitutes and homosexuals need not apply.
To corporate neoliberal executives in high places, poor people are expendable and disposable. There isn't much of an ideology here besides pure greed, self-interest, and a general deficit in empathy for those less fortunate.
To non-woke, social liberals like myself, poor people deserve better than to suffer any of the above. Needs-based or geography-based affirmative action that prioritizes marginalized communities irrespective of race or religion on paper, but often benefits certain races or ethnic groups who typically have it much worse than others in practice without explicitly excluding poor members of traditionally "privileged" racial categories from those same communities is something I can get behind, for instance. Increased public spending on education, healthcare, community outreach (especially between police and locals), retraining and reorganization of police forces, abortion services, etc. is absolutely necessary to make this happen. All of this minus the critical race theory and oftentimes spiteful, divisive, identity politics and oppression Olympics that has plagued the present-day Left in recent years.
I would assume that "socialists" in the benign European sense of traditionally non-woke, anti-SJW, social democrats (an endangered breed) are very much empathetic toward the plight of working-class people just as much as non-woke social liberals (another endangered breed) are, although hypocritical, out-of-touch, college-educated, upper-middle-class, ultra-woke champagne socialists do exist and the distinction between woke, out-of-touch liberals and woke, out-of-touch socialists is becoming increasingly blurred and meaningless over time.
Many economically liberal, but socially conservative Christian democrats in Europe can also count themselves as non-woke "socialists" or social "liberals" in their own way.
All of these latter groups (social liberals, social democrats, Christian democrats, British One Nation conservatives, HK pan-democrats, Taiwanese DPP, etc.) seem reasonably moderate and centrist to me and can be regarded as credible and legitimate champions of the have-nots.
Toilet cleaners, street sweepers, waiters, nurses, war veterans, coal miners, construction workers, and the like deserve far more respect than the kinds of condescending abuse and mistreatment they currently receive at the hands of greedy bosses and entitled patrons alike. The lack of public empathy for working-class people is further compounded by the fact that many of these occupations are dominated by men, while the human brain is naturally hardwired to respond more empathetically to the plight of women and children. Humans are inherently ageist against older people and sexist against men by nature. We are far more willing to send our boys to fight and die in foreign wars. We are far more reluctant to do likewise for girls. Note how radical feminists seldom complain about female under-representation in the armed forces, or hard, manual labor, for instance, thereby belying their true agenda.
To answer the OP's question more directly, it's human nature for rich people to cling on to what they have and live in complete denial, and it's human nature for poor people to envy what they don't have and seethe in jealousy and resentment. It's human nature for middle-class people to exhibit a mixture of these undesirable traits and serve as a buffer and a stabilizing force politically between the two extremes.
Also, I can't help but notice that the left-wing OP uses the term "lower class" instead of the more PC term "working class" as I have done, in complete contravention of woke norms. I know George Galloway would certainly object. He literally told off a caller on one of his talk shows for this unforgivable gaffe. The OP should be canceled for this.
This is a joke.