not everyone has the ability to quit their jobs on the spot for morality sake. there is no social safety net in america. people can't risk losing their jobs and health insurance
Are you talking specifically about engineering? If you have strong ethical disagreements with your current employer, start prepping for interviews. Start early. Invest 2-3 months. Starts interviewing. Sign an offer. Then quit. I don't think anyone in this thread is suggesting a sole family provider should just quit on an arbitrary day and lose their health insurance.
Sure they can. People lose their jobs without notice every day and while it's often a horrible situation, it's one that people can and do recover from.
But I'm not even really arguing that people who do bad things because they want to avoid harmful repercussions must choose differently. I'm arguing that people who do that are choosing to do something unethical, and we are what we do.
Perhaps the ethical tradeoff makes some practical sense for some -- but it's still an ethical tradeoff.
I was under the impression that what defines the proletariat is someone whose income primarily comes from their labour, rather than capital. In this case, plenty of academics and engineers certainly qualify if they need to work to live.
I think the parent commenter is using the term in that context, rather than if they work a blue-collar job or if they’re middle class.
I'm not sure how you can say this. I suppose it may depend on how you define "working class", though. If you mean it in the sense of "middle class", then there are lots of them.