The worldwide middle class is actually growing.

[sufrommich]

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/datablog/2013/jan/30/developing-world-middle-class-growing


The problem for Americans and Europeans is that it's not growing in 1st world countries anymore. That's really what's behind this growing xenophobic rise. Our middle class grew because we flooded the world with American products after WW2 and dictated favorable trade policies to 3rd world countries,it's doubtful we'll ever find ourselves in that position again. In the meantime,while we try to find our way in a world where emerging economies are in direct competition with the first world,the answer will not be found in isolationism and xenophobia,that's raw fear taking the wheel.

[Fresh_Start]

1. yes, we don't like losing our privileges

cause our 1st world problems are so much more important than 2nd and 3rd world problems.

[Hortensis]

10. No need to lose our privileges. Thanks to

tremendously increased productivity at greatly reduced costs, we're enormously wealthy while other nations also develop great wealth, that's increasingly allowing their workers to live well, with medical care, indoor plumbing and all the rest of their own "privileges."

The problem is dysfunctional distribution of all this new wealth, here and in other nations. But we fixed it once already, so we'll fix it again (and then our kids'll probably let it recur and their kids will fix it, etc.)

[Armstead]

2. You don't correct one wrong with another...

Yes the huge gap between the "developed world" and the "third world" has been a longstanding problem.

It is good that in some respects, people in the developed world have some additional ladders to move upward.

But Corporate Colonial and a siphoning of wealth into the upper classes is not the solution to the problem....and it creates more problems that it solves.

It does not create healthy self-sustaining economies in the les-developed world and it sucks the life out of countries that have historically had middle classes.

There are solutions., But handing the keys totally over to the Global Corporate and Investor Elites is not one of them.

[sufrommich]

8. The biggest corporation in the world is China Inc.,it used

to be USA Inc. and most Americans were OK with that. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Asia feels differently about corporations than the U.S. and Europe do.We tend to overlook the sins of corporations when the reward is a huge middle class.

[Armstead]

9. That's the problem -- We've tended to overlook the sins of corporations for too long

I actually believe there is a point of balance inj which corporations are allowed to grow and thrive, and thus feed the overall economy.

But we passed that point years ago. And that is not just a US problem but a global one.

Among otehr things, China Inc. is a beneficiary of the lack of moral and legal accountabiliyu of US corporations. They sold their neighbors out in the mindless pursuit of ever escalating profit at the expense of American workers and the American economy.

That was shameless of Corporate America, and gutless and short sighted of us as a nation to allow and condone it.

[The2ndWheel]

3. I've had the same thought

Just like white males aren't needed as much as they used to be, Americans/Europeans aren't needed as much as they used to be. Plus Americans and Europeans aren't having as many children as they used to.

As you point out, the great American middle class of the 1950's was dependent on time and place. As the world opened up, even just as America opened up, any given individual isn't needed. There's always a replacement. A job is just a job, and can be done anywhere, by anyone. Or, of course, by any thing, which is where automation is entering into the equation at an increasing rate, making each person that much less needed.

It won't be a boring century.

[uponit7771]

7. +1, you done up and done it now...

[Recursion]

4. We don't like the rich paying for better lives for the poor once we realize we're rich

I think Plato said "nobody has ever thought himself to be asleep or rich".

[leveymg]

5. Overall, inequality has risen with wealth. The precentage of US middle-class has fallen as measured

by traditional standards of middle-class life:

stable employment with benefits; home ownership (post 2008); parents payment of college education of children; pension or retirement savings; employer-paid health insurance.

Instead, we've gotten increasing job insecurity, debt and social insecurity, and lots of distracting, expensive electronic gadgets.

No wonder globalization isn't so popular on the ground.

[uponit7771]

6. AMEN and AMEN!!

[HughBeaumont]

11. You kind of need people with disposable income to buy products.

If labor "gets too expensive" (the term of the classically liberal, libertarian and Republican), it's not like millions upon millions of corporate-exploited serfs will be able to make up ground. Got a lot of under-earning and debt-strapped millennials that can't buy big ticket items. Laugh this phenomenon off at your own peril. Great future you're giving to the people who are eventually going to take this earth over.

Also, championing automation is a hilarity with the punchline being your precious capitalism teetering on the edge of a cliff without a rope or a GMI to alleviate the millions that will be permanently without income. You know, those purchasers some of y'all claim are not needed.

But hey, back to your regularly scheduled libertarian water carrying . . .