Re:The middle class is over. It's not coming back.
by cgp on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @12:23PM
(#1783912)
This is really about freedom, education/opportunity, justice. Whereas there really was a stratification, that's becoming flattened. As you say, the pessimistic part of me thinks that all of those things I just listed are being reduced for that segment of population formerly known as the middle class.
It is easy to confuse consumer goods and an easy life with what is means to be middle class.
Nearly everyone has an increasing standard of living. It's this you've got to look at. You just can't use the standards and markers of the past to judge how things are now, or how they are going to be. Because the standards of the past cannot, by definition, take into account the choices of today. You can't balance out, say. widespread mobile internet coverage with, say, people having larger homes 50 years ago. Because even the richest guy in the world couldn't access the internet on a mobile device 50 years ago.
It's natural to be pessimistic. It's also natural to believe that the problems of today can only be solved using the solutions of today. Tomorrow will bring new problems, it will also bring new solutions. But even as each new set of problems is created, and old set is solved and the overall standard of living creaks one step higher, unlikely to slip backwards again.