To stay on my initial point, a situation where the Asian middle class grows and the US middle class has not eroded in the past 20 years would be an appropriate example.

Frankly, I don't buy the story of an eroding American middle class. A stagnating one maybe. But there just isn't data to support the idea of a regressing one.

People look at the past with rose colored glasses.

Yes, there is data in support of a regressing middle class in the US and it can be most easily seen in the labor force participation rate and the hourly wage "underemployment" demographics of the working class under the age of 35. I mean, if you want to deal in beliefs, then you can believe whatever you want. Speaking of rose colored glasses, a "doubling" of the Asian middle class in the past 20 years doesn't strike me as much improvement if we start talking about the hard numbers and population % still living in abject poverty.

1) The labor force participation rate is declining primarily due to an aging population. And even with the decline it's still much higher than it was at any time before the mid 80s (primarily due to women entering the workforce).

2) The % of the world living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically in the past half century.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/13/9145467/extreme-poverty-global-...

The story of the last 50 years is really about members of the western middle class finally having to deal with competition from the rest of the world due to globalization. While this has certainly had some downsides for the western middle class it has been an INCREDIBLY HUGE BOON for everyone else. It's very hard to overstate how fast east asia has transformed from poverty to relative wealth and how good this has been for hundreds of millions of people.

Go look at a picture of what Shanghai looked like in 1990 vs today: http://gizmodo.com/5558350/shanghai-skyline-before-and-after

> Speaking of rose colored glasses, a "doubling" of the Asian middle class in the past 20 years doesn't strike me as much improvement if we start talking about the hard numbers and population % still living in abject poverty.

But it's a massive improvement if you talk about the numbers who were living in poverty and now aren't.

Much progress. Much yet to do. Both are true.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/08/a-global-middle-class-is... seems to mention otherwise.

Having seen the changes over last 20 years in India, the middle class is now a lot vulnerable and in the fix with absolutely zero safety net. The earning power of the middle class might have doubled but the expenses and the standard of living has increased manifolds, thus pushing them further to the bottom.