The middle class

[The2ndWheel]

Is it a historical anomoly? Will it be? Is it sustainable in a world with 6.5 billion people and counting, with capital as free as the wind to cross borders(that only exist for actual humans)? Is it possible in an economic system where the rules are made by the entities who's only reason for existing is profit? Can it continue in a world where automation has reduced the need for human work? Will it go forward in a world with high energy prices(for whatever reason)?

[Sammy Pepys]

1. The only answer I can muster....

...is that the line between the middle class, working class and the poor is increasingly harder to find. I don't know what this means for the future though.

[enfield collector]

2. without the middle clas we become Mexico, and I don't want that.

Also judging by the rate at which the Mexicans are fleeing Mexico they don't want it either.

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. The middle class in America is over

Massive corporations have acquired the American political system as merely another subsidiary that makes them profit. Owning a political system has great economic benefits and, in the case of America, it comes with it's own high tech military enforcement arm. The people that finance and run these corporations don't give a damn about the death of the American middle class. They have calculated that there is significantly more money to be made by abandoning the American worker. The next 100 years will be spent by these corporations jumping around the globe in search of the lowest wages and the least regulations. The GOP in America is just a front group for the business and money elite.

[RufusEarl]

4. Watching television the other evening,

the program showed poor peasants heading to large cities trying to find a way to exist.
This was mostly Africa, and the Far East, but it's only a matter of time until it hits our shores.

While watching this program, all i could think of was why are the poor people heading to the cities. Once they arrive in the cities they live is squaller and work until death for meager wages, with not future.

If this is the future for this country, i'm going to take a different direction. Instead of going to large cities, i'm heading for the hills. You bet, stay away from metro areas and large groups of unfed uncared for people.

I'll take my chances with the wilderness, and live off the land. Of course one needs training on how to live off the land, and my suggestion to the masses would be learn how and teach your children and do it fast.

[Robbien]

5. They head for the cities because corporations take over water supplies

where rural people can no longer get water to grow their crops. Since corporations are starting to privatize water here, your plan may not be possible.

[Speck Tater]

6. Good idea...to a point

But the land can only support a small number of "hunter-gatherers". Some very small percentage of the people would theoretically be able to subsist as "hermits" off the grid and outside the system. But it would be impossible for "the masses" to exist that way simply because the there are too many of them. By the time you find a choice berry bush, 57 other people have already picked it clean.

There is probably some absolute limit to the number of people that can be supported by the planet in what we call the middle class, and we have probably already exceeded that limit. Consdier, for example, how many middle class people are employed in the industry of manufacturing, transporting and marketing various brands of flavored sugar water such as Coke and Pepsi, etc. These useless and wasteful products can only be purchased by people whose income dervies from the manufacturing, transporting and distribution of some other useless and wasteful product.

When we wake up to the reality that we cannot afford such luxuries as burning precious fossil fuels to transport sugar water around the country, then not only are the sugar water executives out of a job, but the advertising executives, art directors, sugar water web site designers, etc. etc. are displaced as well.

When a very large percentage of the country's workers are employed in useless and wasteful enterprises that we will not be able to support much longer then the whole house of cards is poised to come crashing down, and quite abruptly.

[Ron Green]

9. Very well put, and a good analysis. The "middle class" has been built,

at least on this continent, by the world's largest and richest layer of A1 topsoil (much of which is now depleted) and huge reserves of domestic crude oil (also mostly gone.) The normal human state of masters/slaves was skewed, throughout the 20th century, to include almost all white people in the "master" group. The natural master/slave arrangement is coming back, and the Neocons are working hard to give Americans (some of them, at least) the chance to end of on the "right side" of that arrangement. The political "middle class" that we're counting on to reject Bush, his lies and his war, will be strung along for a few more decades as we continue to enslave the rest of the world to support the level of comfort and convenience that will be our ultimate undoing.

Or so it seems to me.

[BiggJawn]

7. Just look out for these two...

While you're out there humming "A Countryboy kin SURVIVE" to yourself.

Gonna be so crowded out there in the "boonies" with all you wanna-be moutainmen killing each other for your jerky I think I'll take my chances in the city.

[Igel]

11. It happened in this country many a decade ago.

Apparently in the 1890s the rural population began to drop, and in the 1920s a majority of people lived in cities.

The agrarian population's pretty much continued to drop: fewer small farms, more larger cities. It's hard to see the pattern continuing because of the suburbs, and the latest American weirdness, the exurbs.

At some point small farming has a few different drawbacks. It's no longer profitable: mechanization and large-scale farms make for cheaper crops, and you have to settle for less or move on. People see that in the cities they have better amenities, and maybe can make more money. Esp. young people.

And in many countries there's overpopulation and the environment's not being very friendly--overfarming, poor or contaminated water, drought....

[Jayhawk Lib]

8. Is it possible in an economic system where the rules

are made by the entities who's only reason for existing is profit? That is one of your questions.

The ONLY reason a person-corporation goes into business is profit. If a person does not have the ambition or where-with-all to start and run a business, he has the advantage of working for the business or corporation without all of the risks and headaches of running a business.

In a dream world business would go into business just to supply a need and jobs for the rest of us but that is never going to happen. We live in a real world and if you do not like working for the corporate world you have every right to start your own business.

[RufusEarl]

10. Henry Ford

Henry had the right idea IMHO, he once said if my employees can't afford to purchase my automobiles then i want have a business. So he raised his employees wages so they could afford to buy his auto's.

Now to my way of thinking that's pretty damn smart, if only our current crop of corporate master's we like Henry the country would be much better off.

I was a company man for 21 years retired in 97, and now i own and operate my own business. I didn't mind working for a corp, and it was good to me and my family. I much prefer working for myself, and the rewards and headaches that go with it.

But with corp in this country and around the world, it's all bottom line. Profits over compassion is the mantra of corporate america, and with that attitude the middle class is DOOMED!

[Jayhawk Lib]

12. That was in Henry Ford's day

I do not think and Boeing worker would ever afford to by a B737. You probably do enjoy your business and I am glad but the bottom line has to be the only thing that matters.

I am not a business man. I am a retired hourly worker that worked for the same company for 36 years.

[RufusEarl]

14. I disagree with you about the bottom line!

I believe thats the problem with our country at this time, all business is concerned with the bottom line and only the bottom line. IMHO, business needs to be concerned with it's workers.

It's important for a any business to make money, it can't exist without making a profit. But really does a company that makes let's say 10 billion in profits per year and let's it's employee's go without health care is that wise from a society stand point? I don't think so!

This Exxon guy that just got paid four million dollars, now did he really earn that type of salary. I believe it's decadent for one person to make that kind of money when our society is suffering. Sorry i guess i'm just a bleeding heart liberal.

[Speck Tater]

13. Yes, but...

A person goes into business to make a profit. Very often, however, that person also goes into business doing something he or she loves to do, and most such business owners would be satisfied with a modest profit and a good standard of living. I know that I am in business for myself for the love of the owrk, and to provide a living wage for myself, and nothing more.

Enter the investor class. While they provide the start-up capital, they expect to be repaid for that "loan" in perpetuity. The pressure placed on the business owners, who have in fact sold their business to the investors, demands that the business not only profit, but that its profits continue to grow indefinately, often resulting in laying off workers and crippling the business long-term for the sake of THIS quarter's bottom line. See my little blog piece "The Dark Side of Capitalism for a sample scenario: http://speakoutusa.com/articles/art3.php