4 ms·

Anyone able to offer an explaination of why having a large middle class is viewed as positive? For example, say large population was happy, educated, healthy, e

by nxzero 10y ago

Anyone able to offer an explaination of why having a large middle class is viewed as positive? For example, say large population was happy, educated, healthy, etc. - why does it matter what the class distribution is?

drawkbox 10y ago
I was always told the lower class or poor are there to scare the middle class into working and supporting the upper class. The middle is the padding/margin that keeps the possibly of moving up and out of your class a seeming reality, but also keeps the divide from rich/poor from being too strong. If you just have rich/poor, the opportunities seem more dire, less opportunity and less mobility is possible and lots of bad things start to happen. A society that tends to the middle is a more healthy one, one that tends solely to rich/poor needs leaves those middle people out of luck, that is what we have now. This is also a consumer economy, the lower/middle spend over $1 or 100%+ of their incremental dollar earned, the rich only spend .05 or 5% of their incremental dollar. It is good to have consumers that can spend in a consumer economy, it helps all levels of class/wealth. Rich/poor do not spend enough to keep a consumer economy afloat that actually moves money the way it is supposed to move and you end up with stagnation and long drawn out recessions. In downturns, the poor have no money and the rich don't spend or invest in downturns enough, the middle always has to spend. If you sell products it is also nicer to have middle class out there that can buy, not just upper class. The products that target each are fairly different and there are only so many rich consumers.
bhouston 10y ago
Very often once things divide into the rich and the poor, there is decreased mobility and often the divide is along ethnic lines. This increases tensions and reduces social cohesion. The rich actually stop caring about the lower classes and then either they deny rights to the lower class (e.g. dictatorship, occupation, etc.) or the lower class elects people who take away richness from the upper class (e.g. socialism, revolution, etc.) -- either way it is a mess once the divide becomes entrenched and social cohesion breaks down. One book that covers this well is World on Fire: https://www.amazon.ca/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instability/dp/0385721862 https://www.amazon.ca/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instabi...
wturner 10y ago
If people are happy and healthy being slaves or doing slave labor ( or just complacent ) it doesn't matter. The problem is if they revolt and kill those responsible. The goal from a completely Machiavellian perspective is social order.
cauterized 10y ago
Democracies tend to function better with a large middle class that's well educated and has economic clout than it does with a small, powerful moneyed elite and a huge underclass that's struggling just to survive and has no time or mental energy to spare paying attention to politics. Additionally, the discretionary spending of middle class households helps fuel the economy.
- partisan 10y ago
  > Democracies tend to function better with a large middle class that's well educated and has economic clout than it does with a small, powerful moneyed elite and a huge underclass that's struggling just to survive and has no time or mental energy to spare paying attention to politics. Sources?
  - cauterized 10y ago
    Books I read a decade ago in political science classes and couldn't remember who did the studies or proposed the theories. http://www.brill.com/middle-class-and-democracy-socio-historical-perspective http://www.brill.com/middle-class-and-democracy-socio-histor... looks like it might discuss the topic, but I don't know what perspective it takes
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      If nothing else, a tighter clustering of incomes implies a certain degree of commonality of experience and interest compared to a less-tight distribution. This means a lower probability, all other things being equal, that a majority-supported position will be extremely unwelcome by a large minority, which is probably a good thing for a democratic state.
antidaily 10y ago
Can't be great for tax base. Thats one thought.
bluthru 10y ago
It's true that wealth is not zero sum, but many of the things that wealth buy are zero sum. Political influence, time, land, attractiveness, power, etc. are all about sorting you relative to others. No matter how much new "wealth" there is, everyone can't have the same lobbying influence and live in Manhattan.
carleverett 10y ago
Smaller middle class = higher income inequality. Generally this means a larger population of unhappy, uneducated, and unhealthy people.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Anyone able to offer an explaination of why having a large middle class is viewed as positive? In the traditional view espoused by many advocates of capitalism, the traditional "middle class" (those living by a mix of capital and labor, either applying their own labor to their own capital as small business owners or yeoman farmers, or by having both capital to which other's rented labor is applied and labor which they rent to others -- i.e, an upper-income wage laborer with some personal real estate and financial investments) is idealized; I'm not sure if there is a substantive reason for this so much as a PR one, though -- its something that the working class can somewhat understandably (even if not always plausibly) aspire to and the existing middle class can identify with. But, if you look at most of the criticisms of capitalism, they mostly focus on the problems that exist in the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, so the more of the population that is in the middle class -- which is both less subject to exploitation than the working class and less capable of it than the capitalist class -- the less the problems associated with capitalism are. Note, however, while this idealization of the "middle class" remains in the US, the definition of middle class in many media uses (including this article and the supporting research) has drifted to refer to a range around the "middle income", which is very different from the traditional concept of middle class; most of the people in this band are firmly in the working class, with only the top-end of most median-income-centered definitions of "middle class" containing people that are plausibly in the traditional middle class.
ArtDev 10y ago
From personal experience, countries with extreme income distributions have a wide host of problems; from political unstability and civil wars to poverty and disease. Almost all third-world countries are like this.
mfringel 10y ago
To go full-on Machiavellian for a second: The middle class has enough material wealth to have "something to lose", but not enough material wealth to individually upset the status quo too much. On top of that, there are enough resources to go around to allow a large group of people have that same approximate level of wealth. Ergo, the middle class is a tremendous stabilizing force in a society, and they're "guillotine insurance" for the rich.

by nxzero 10y ago

drawkbox 10y ago

I was always told the lower class or poor are there to scare the middle class into working and supporting the upper class. The middle is the padding/margin that keeps the possibly of moving up and out of your class a seeming reality, but also keeps the divide from rich/poor from being too strong. If you just have rich/poor, the opportunities seem more dire, less opportunity and less mobility is possible and lots of bad things start to happen. A society that tends to the middle is a more healthy one, one that tends solely to rich/poor needs leaves those middle people out of luck, that is what we have now. This is also a consumer economy, the lower/middle spend over $1 or 100%+ of their incremental dollar earned, the rich only spend .05 or 5% of their incremental dollar. It is good to have consumers that can spend in a consumer economy, it helps all levels of class/wealth. Rich/poor do not spend enough to keep a consumer economy afloat that actually moves money the way it is supposed to move and you end up with stagnation and long drawn out recessions. In downturns, the poor have no money and the rich don't spend or invest in downturns enough, the middle always has to spend. If you sell products it is also nicer to have middle class out there that can buy, not just upper class. The products that target each are fairly different and there are only so many rich consumers.

bhouston 10y ago

Very often once things divide into the rich and the poor, there is decreased mobility and often the divide is along ethnic lines. This increases tensions and reduces social cohesion. The rich actually stop caring about the lower classes and then either they deny rights to the lower class (e.g. dictatorship, occupation, etc.) or the lower class elects people who take away richness from the upper class (e.g. socialism, revolution, etc.) -- either way it is a mess once the divide becomes entrenched and social cohesion breaks down. One book that covers this well is World on Fire: https://www.amazon.ca/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instability/dp/0385721862 https://www.amazon.ca/World-Fire-Exporting-Democracy-Instabi...

wturner 10y ago

If people are happy and healthy being slaves or doing slave labor ( or just complacent ) it doesn't matter. The problem is if they revolt and kill those responsible. The goal from a completely Machiavellian perspective is social order.

cauterized 10y ago

Democracies tend to function better with a large middle class that's well educated and has economic clout than it does with a small, powerful moneyed elite and a huge underclass that's struggling just to survive and has no time or mental energy to spare paying attention to politics. Additionally, the discretionary spending of middle class households helps fuel the economy.

partisan 10y ago
> Democracies tend to function better with a large middle class that's well educated and has economic clout than it does with a small, powerful moneyed elite and a huge underclass that's struggling just to survive and has no time or mental energy to spare paying attention to politics. Sources?
- cauterized 10y ago
  Books I read a decade ago in political science classes and couldn't remember who did the studies or proposed the theories. http://www.brill.com/middle-class-and-democracy-socio-historical-perspective http://www.brill.com/middle-class-and-democracy-socio-histor... looks like it might discuss the topic, but I don't know what perspective it takes
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    If nothing else, a tighter clustering of incomes implies a certain degree of commonality of experience and interest compared to a less-tight distribution. This means a lower probability, all other things being equal, that a majority-supported position will be extremely unwelcome by a large minority, which is probably a good thing for a democratic state.

antidaily 10y ago

Can't be great for tax base. Thats one thought.

bluthru 10y ago

It's true that wealth is not zero sum, but many of the things that wealth buy are zero sum. Political influence, time, land, attractiveness, power, etc. are all about sorting you relative to others. No matter how much new "wealth" there is, everyone can't have the same lobbying influence and live in Manhattan.

carleverett 10y ago

Smaller middle class = higher income inequality. Generally this means a larger population of unhappy, uneducated, and unhealthy people.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Anyone able to offer an explaination of why having a large middle class is viewed as positive? In the traditional view espoused by many advocates of capitalism, the traditional "middle class" (those living by a mix of capital and labor, either applying their own labor to their own capital as small business owners or yeoman farmers, or by having both capital to which other's rented labor is applied and labor which they rent to others -- i.e, an upper-income wage laborer with some personal real estate and financial investments) is idealized; I'm not sure if there is a substantive reason for this so much as a PR one, though -- its something that the working class can somewhat understandably (even if not always plausibly) aspire to and the existing middle class can identify with. But, if you look at most of the criticisms of capitalism, they mostly focus on the problems that exist in the relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, so the more of the population that is in the middle class -- which is both less subject to exploitation than the working class and less capable of it than the capitalist class -- the less the problems associated with capitalism are. Note, however, while this idealization of the "middle class" remains in the US, the definition of middle class in many media uses (including this article and the supporting research) has drifted to refer to a range around the "middle income", which is very different from the traditional concept of middle class; most of the people in this band are firmly in the working class, with only the top-end of most median-income-centered definitions of "middle class" containing people that are plausibly in the traditional middle class.

ArtDev 10y ago

From personal experience, countries with extreme income distributions have a wide host of problems; from political unstability and civil wars to poverty and disease. Almost all third-world countries are like this.

mfringel 10y ago

To go full-on Machiavellian for a second: The middle class has enough material wealth to have "something to lose", but not enough material wealth to individually upset the status quo too much. On top of that, there are enough resources to go around to allow a large group of people have that same approximate level of wealth. Ergo, the middle class is a tremendous stabilizing force in a society, and they're "guillotine insurance" for the rich.