5 ms·

It's kind of the opposite. Scroll down to the chart showing 2004 vs 2014. The middle class is actually growing very rapidly - far more rapidly than the growth o

by RyanZAG 11y ago

It's kind of the opposite. Scroll down to the chart showing 2004 vs 2014. The middle class is actually growing very rapidly - far more rapidly than the growth of the middle class during industrial revolution Europe, and in contrast to the shrinking middle class of USA today. Anybody complaining it is 'too slow' is living in a dream world without realizing that moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts. Something as simple from using a hole in the ground as a toilet to the huge infrastructure of piped plumbing from dams is an enormous change in culture. Take the monthly costs of such infrastructure which must be paid and enforced across a population that previously did not have those kinds of burdens for a quick spot check on culture.

astazangasta 11y ago
>moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts. This is wrong. I recommend reading Ha-Joon Chang,a wonderful heterodox economist who is fond of pointing out that his native South Korea went from the development status of Madagascar to one of the largest economies in the world in a scant 50 years. This doesn't take forever.
- DevX101 11y ago
  Any books you'd recommend from him/her?
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    I liked 'Bad Samaritans', which is attacking conventional wisdom on trade liberalisation. He also had a great series of food columns in the FT this summer - discussions that began with carrots and segued into Dutch trade wars, worth a read.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  I'll also observe that 50 years is multiple generations (~2). I think that people are prone to being frustrated and complaining about not seeing enough progress in a short subset of their own working life, which I assume was RyanZAG's point.
  - Rexxar 11y ago
    50 years means that if you are born in third world country you can retire in a rich country without emigrating.
  - bane 11y ago
    My father-in-law was a pre-teen during the devastating Korean War - orphaned during the war and grew up in poverty. Got into vegetable wholesaling during the beginning of the boom years and made enough money to get into real estate speculation which then boomed even bigger -- making him a nice bit of money along the way. He's now semi-retired, plays golf, lives in a luxury house his son built for him and my mother-in-law, drives a nice foreign car and splits his "work time" between maintaining undeveloped property his U.S. friends have purchased for investment and buying and selling small apartment buildings. He once took me to a small museum where they had on display various "traditional" cooking and houseware items. Wood, stone, woven rice straw rope, a bit of metal here and there for blades and things that needed weight. I thought these were relics from maybe the 17th or 18th century (or earlier) since they were "traditional" -- and in truth lots of it looked like late Iron Age level technology. He said that he grew up with that stuff, cooking in handmade pots, wearing woven hay sandals and rough woven fabric clothes. By the time my wife's generation was born, Korea's industrialization was well underway. It wasn't maybe "first world", but 20 years after a war which completely flattened the country, my wife was born into a world with running water, electricity, cars, schools, colleges, coffee shops, restaurants, telephones, high-rise apartment buildings, cheap and secure food...as a young girl she grew up on American schlock-80s imported TV like MacGuyver, A-Team and so on, they had regular video game arcades, home computers, boutique coffee shops, designer clothing, malls, department stores, a robust television, film and entertainment industry and so on. Her 80s childhood would have been not much different than a kid growing up in New York City. That's 30 years after the war. Korea had joined the "developed" world when that first generation was young and had ascended to first-world before that generation was out of working years.

by RyanZAG 11y ago

astazangasta 11y ago

>moving classes takes generations of effort and enormous culture shifts. This is wrong. I recommend reading Ha-Joon Chang,a wonderful heterodox economist who is fond of pointing out that his native South Korea went from the development status of Madagascar to one of the largest economies in the world in a scant 50 years. This doesn't take forever.

DevX101 11y ago
Any books you'd recommend from him/her?
- astazangasta 11y ago
  I liked 'Bad Samaritans', which is attacking conventional wisdom on trade liberalisation. He also had a great series of food columns in the FT this summer - discussions that began with carrots and segued into Dutch trade wars, worth a read.
sokoloff 11y ago
I'll also observe that 50 years is multiple generations (~2). I think that people are prone to being frustrated and complaining about not seeing enough progress in a short subset of their own working life, which I assume was RyanZAG's point.
- Rexxar 11y ago
  50 years means that if you are born in third world country you can retire in a rich country without emigrating.
- bane 11y ago
  My father-in-law was a pre-teen during the devastating Korean War - orphaned during the war and grew up in poverty. Got into vegetable wholesaling during the beginning of the boom years and made enough money to get into real estate speculation which then boomed even bigger -- making him a nice bit of money along the way. He's now semi-retired, plays golf, lives in a luxury house his son built for him and my mother-in-law, drives a nice foreign car and splits his "work time" between maintaining undeveloped property his U.S. friends have purchased for investment and buying and selling small apartment buildings. He once took me to a small museum where they had on display various "traditional" cooking and houseware items. Wood, stone, woven rice straw rope, a bit of metal here and there for blades and things that needed weight. I thought these were relics from maybe the 17th or 18th century (or earlier) since they were "traditional" -- and in truth lots of it looked like late Iron Age level technology. He said that he grew up with that stuff, cooking in handmade pots, wearing woven hay sandals and rough woven fabric clothes. By the time my wife's generation was born, Korea's industrialization was well underway. It wasn't maybe "first world", but 20 years after a war which completely flattened the country, my wife was born into a world with running water, electricity, cars, schools, colleges, coffee shops, restaurants, telephones, high-rise apartment buildings, cheap and secure food...as a young girl she grew up on American schlock-80s imported TV like MacGuyver, A-Team and so on, they had regular video game arcades, home computers, boutique coffee shops, designer clothing, malls, department stores, a robust television, film and entertainment industry and so on. Her 80s childhood would have been not much different than a kid growing up in New York City. That's 30 years after the war. Korea had joined the "developed" world when that first generation was young and had ascended to first-world before that generation was out of working years.