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You vastly underestimate the size and diversity of India. Their middle class is bigger than that of the USA or I think even that of the entire EU. The can have
by BAReF00t 7y ago
You vastly underestimate the size and diversity of India.
Their middle class is bigger than that of the USA or I think even that of the entire EU.
The can have a low rate on pretty much every statistic, while still having a higher total amount of it than us, simply due to.the sheer size of people. They could have an entire state, more modern, rich and with more people than Germany, while keeping their current statistics. No problem.
Also: Are you Indian (I think not), or what is your basis for the ”rootless“ statement. To us Germans, Americans appear rootless. But we are not competent to judge that!
Finally, things like this right here ARE how you get Indians out of poverty and illiteracy! Even if just via the resulting businesses lobbying for more education.
- simongray 7y ago> Their middle class is bigger than that of the USA or I think even that of the entire EU. According to Wikipedia: "Indian middle class is 3% or 40 million of Indian population." That's not a whole lot of people and definitely not comparable to North America or Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India
- geogra4 7y agoIt's about the same size as France, who matches India in real gdp
- simongray 7y agoThat is not the claim that was being made though. The one I replied to said India's middle class was bigger than the American and European ones. Being comparable to country with 5% of India's population basically just underlines the fact that India's middle class is tiny.
- accidentaldev 7y agoThe same article has other stat that says anywhere between 30-300 million are considered middle class. Is there a consensus among economists on what the real number is ?
- simongray 7y agoIt's obviously not an exact science, since "middle class" has as much to do with how people define their own social status as it has to do with their actual income. But those measures counting hundreds of millions of Indians as middle class are doing that by including people surviving on a few dollars a day. Maybe in an Indian context where poverty is widespread this is considered middle class, but it's quite misleading to present that as middle class to a Western audience.
- oblio 7y agoI'm willing to bet that the disposable income of the US/EU middle classes exceeds that of the Indian one at least 10:1, for now.
- saimiam 7y agoMy wife’s most cited and quoted paper is on correctly defining the Indian middle class. Happy to share the link if there’s interest.
- stallmanite 7y agoI’m interested, please post the link to the paper.
- selimthegrim 7y agoYes, I’m interested too.
- saimiam 7y agoOriginal paper (pdf): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandhya_Krishnan/publication/317345165_Rise_of_the_New_Middle_Class_in_India_and_Its_Changing_Structure/links/59351c750f7e9beee7d17724/Rise-of-the-New-Middle-Class-in-India-and-Its-Changing-Structure.pdf?origin=publication_detail https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandhya_Krishnan/public... Quora answer quoting her work (layman’s terms): https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-Indias-real-middle-class-in-2018 https://www.quora.com/How-big-is-Indias-real-middle-class-in...
- selimthegrim 7y agoHe’s a closet Hindu nationalist
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar.