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Could have been titled "The disappearing Middle class" but hey who wants to talk about late stage capitalism. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/

Could have been titled "The disappearing Middle class" but hey who wants to talk about late stage capitalism. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16868838/elephant-graph-chart-global-inequality-economic-growth https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/2/16868838/el...

bryanlarsen 8y ago
That article leads with a graph that shows massive gains for ~80% of the world's population and then tries to claim that this is a bad thing.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  Depends on how you express those graphs. From a western perspective it means the rich taking most of the gains of the last 30 years and sprinkling the remaining gains across the developing world. Go to millennials, who are the first western generation to be poorer than their parents, and explain to them how great this deal is!
- pariahHN 8y ago
  The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a vanishing middle class. Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty. Ideally we would see a global lift out of poverty without any local negative impacts re middle/upper classes - everybody rising to the same level instead of some rising and some falling. It's also a lot easier to rise out of poverty when it takes relatively little advancement, and easier to fall into poverty when it takes relatively little loss. I think that aspect of things is often overlooked - poverty doesn't mean the same thing everywhere, and middle class doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Some areas are rising, but some are falling - as a sum, things are rising. It's the same thing as global warming - yeah, some areas are getting colder instead of warmer and this is pointed to as being evidence of global warming == false, but global warming refers to on average across the whole globe not just a single region. People tend to conflate their local with the global, sometimes because they just miss it and sometimes deliberately.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

That article leads with a graph that shows massive gains for ~80% of the world's population and then tries to claim that this is a bad thing.

petermcneeley 8y ago
Depends on how you express those graphs. From a western perspective it means the rich taking most of the gains of the last 30 years and sprinkling the remaining gains across the developing world. Go to millennials, who are the first western generation to be poorer than their parents, and explain to them how great this deal is!
pariahHN 8y ago
The thing is, it depends on your perspective. Local to America, yes there is a vanishing middle class. Globally, yes there is a lift out of poverty. Ideally we would see a global lift out of poverty without any local negative impacts re middle/upper classes - everybody rising to the same level instead of some rising and some falling. It's also a lot easier to rise out of poverty when it takes relatively little advancement, and easier to fall into poverty when it takes relatively little loss. I think that aspect of things is often overlooked - poverty doesn't mean the same thing everywhere, and middle class doesn't mean the same thing everywhere. Some areas are rising, but some are falling - as a sum, things are rising. It's the same thing as global warming - yeah, some areas are getting colder instead of warmer and this is pointed to as being evidence of global warming == false, but global warming refers to on average across the whole globe not just a single region. People tend to conflate their local with the global, sometimes because they just miss it and sometimes deliberately.