Middle Class vs. Middle Class

It was a report that didn’t get enough coverage yet was fantastic in scope. For the first time in human history, slightly over half of the world’s population is identified as either middle class or richer – over 3.5 billion people.  That leaves a slightly smaller number as vulnerable or poor, but, still, the rapid advancement of the financial status of half the globe serves as a remarkable moment in time.Released last month (September 2018) by the Brookings Institute, it serves as a reminder that much is happening in our world that is good and angles towards hope.  Perhaps more interesting is the speed by which it is all transpiring.  One billion people are being added to the middle class every seven years.This was not some random bit of research but a look at the shifting economic dynamics of 188 countries. Each of those nations exists in varying economic circumstances, but the standard used by Brookings registered the vulnerable or poor as households that must spend less than $1.90 (US) per person per day – less than two dollars. The middle class are households that spend between $11- 110 per person per day. The vulnerable are situated between these two.Brookings defines middle class as those households who have enough discretionary income to buy higher-value goods like large appliances or vehicles.  “They can afford to go to movies or other kinds of entertainment,” says the report.  “They may take vacations and they are reasonably confident that they and their family can weather an economic shock – like illness or a spell of unemployment – without falling back into extreme poverty.”Here’s a chart from the report.  A link to it can be found here. The majority of the people entering this new middle class ranking – 9 out of 10 - are from the region including China, South and South-East Asia, and India.  Africa will follow soon enough.But this isn’t happening in isolation.  The rise of these billions is transpiring at the same time as the prosperous nations, mostly in the West, are entering a period of stagnation or decline.  These were the countries that flourished following World War Two and whose middle class vaulted them into some of the most stable nations in the world.  There has been no major war between these nations and in issues like trade and interdependence they were undeniably successful.That’s not the case anymore. The middle class in these nations is now restive and voting in ways that destabilizes much of what had been built in the post-war period.  It’s a telling sign of how ironic things have become when leaders celebrated when Amazon announced it would begin paying its thousands of employees a minimum wage of $15 (US) an hour.  Naturally, that’s a good thing, but it begs the question: why was it that the largest company in the world, led by the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, is only getting around to this now?There was a time when wages were decent, benefits were part of the deal, and companies valued their employees for their quality of work and productivity.  Now they mostly demand the productivity but with little reward.  In stripping the workers of their true worth, the path was set where the Western world would begin moving in the opposite direction of the billions the Brookings report is talking about.The East is thriving and the West is taking on water.  And yet most of the wealthiest corporations are stationed in the West.  They chose to pursue profit by shifting resources, including jobs, overseas to Asia, which ironically helped introduced billions to a middle class that the West was letting deteriorate.  We understand that business is business and that competition drives its activities.  We have also been learning how our own good fortunes here in the West were frequently accelerated by our exploitation of the East and elsewhere.  But in permitting this moving forward from pillar to post rationale, we have created a world in which one group of middle-class is now battling another half-way across the globe.  We have permitted capitalism to play favourites, to pit citizen against citizen, in order to maximize profits.  And now, for the first time in history, two large middle- class entities are entering a war with one another that will result in a few gaining more riches through promoting such activities.This is not how equitable societies are supposed to live or deal with one another.   We are global citizens and that should mean we are learning lessons as to how wealth should be shared in a spirit of equality and poverty reduced in a spirit of humanity.The Brooking’s report is one remarkable piece of good news, but once we put it up against Western decline, we realize that this “winner take all” mentality continues to leave us in conflict and destroying our natural world in the process.  We must all learn from our overindulgences or willingness to accept poverty and begin building a sharing world that results in prosperity, sustainability, and social justice.  Just shifting it around the globe in endless pursuit of profit is actually splitting the world and leading to alienation and environmental decline.