What if the existence of a middle class is transitory? The billionare preppers certainly think our current social order is on borrowed time[1], not that I agree with their outlook, but I take that attitude as evidence that today's capital class does not particularly care for the continued existence of a middle class, unlike Henry Ford.
Once off sales are passé now, and recurring revenue is in. I suspect the middle class gets in the way of profit maximization because of the class' propensity to saving and ability to cross-shop since they have free time.
Selling Patagonia vests for leisure activities may be profitable, but it will lose out to PE squeezing out the middle class from buying homes and making them perpetual renters and unable to afford leisure activity
1. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
High production, high consumption models are so many people are able to have discretionary income in the modern era. And this is true for every modern economy whether it be democratic, socialist, communist etc. Maximizing productive capacity has a lot of social and environmental consequences and while we are free to hate on the corporations that make it possible, we must also admit that our way of life entirely depends on it. We are of course free to dream of other ways of life, but looking back in history there have been no alternatives that have offered our current quality of life to such a large collection of people.