Peak Middle Class
One of my high school history textbooks went to great lengths to shoot down communism as it was explaining it. The authors cited a large middle class, such as in the US, as a bulwark against the class struggle predicted by Marx and Engels. I guess that argument stuck with me, and over the years I have tended to find comfort in our prosperous middle class as a stabilizing influence in our political culture.
But the middle class comes with a hefty environmental price tag.
If you listen to Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg or any of many academic doomsayers, it is the large, comfortable middle classes of the developed world and the growing middle classes in Asia that are the primary culprits in both energy depletion and climate change. Not the rich, because there aren't enough of them to make a difference, not the teeming millions of poor because they don't individually own or consume all that much, but the middle class with their long SUV commutes to large, exurban houses stocked with globally manufactured possessions.
And the middle classes are themselves an economic burden.
If you believe Sharon Astyk, the middle class bears on a substantial economic foundation of newly-industrialized third world workers. Some of the middle class live off the rich or other middle class workers, but by and large it is the huge numbers of new buyers at the bottom that raise the pyramid of wealth for everyone. If enough of those workers lose their jobs, return to subsistence agriculture, or fall prey to some political disaster, there will be fewer customers to support the global middle class.
So the paradox is that a large middle class is a contented, reliable population for a nation, but a danger to the entire planet's health and prosperity. Even more than general population reduction, I expect to see a reduction in middle class populations worldwide.
Will the future be a grim exercise in Dickensian class struggle, as those who have struggle to keep from joining those who no longer have? Or will people manage to be happy with less?
But the middle class comes with a hefty environmental price tag.
If you listen to Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg or any of many academic doomsayers, it is the large, comfortable middle classes of the developed world and the growing middle classes in Asia that are the primary culprits in both energy depletion and climate change. Not the rich, because there aren't enough of them to make a difference, not the teeming millions of poor because they don't individually own or consume all that much, but the middle class with their long SUV commutes to large, exurban houses stocked with globally manufactured possessions.
And the middle classes are themselves an economic burden.
If you believe Sharon Astyk, the middle class bears on a substantial economic foundation of newly-industrialized third world workers. Some of the middle class live off the rich or other middle class workers, but by and large it is the huge numbers of new buyers at the bottom that raise the pyramid of wealth for everyone. If enough of those workers lose their jobs, return to subsistence agriculture, or fall prey to some political disaster, there will be fewer customers to support the global middle class.
So the paradox is that a large middle class is a contented, reliable population for a nation, but a danger to the entire planet's health and prosperity. Even more than general population reduction, I expect to see a reduction in middle class populations worldwide.
Will the future be a grim exercise in Dickensian class struggle, as those who have struggle to keep from joining those who no longer have? Or will people manage to be happy with less?
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Interesting Donal. So you don't think a middle class can learn to do more with less?
I think they can. They are right now, actually. Ask anyone that still has a job....
=D
January 28, 2009 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well the middle class that I grew up with in Ohio, Pa and Fl. did do more with less - as you say. Not necessarily because they had to but because of their experience. Most had gone though the depression of the 1930s and WWII and their values were influenced by this. Not even those in the upper middle or lower upper class lived ostentatiously. It simply was not done and was frowned upon. There was more humility and modesty
in the way people lived.
Maybe these traits will become fashionable again.
C
January 28, 2009 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I grew up with the same sort of people. "Showing off" was not done.
January 28, 2009 10:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Happy with less?
It can be done. Happiness doesn't truly hang from 'stuff', does it? I mean, lots of people have lots of stuff and still aren't happy.
The phrase 'reduced circumstances' comes into mind when I think about the middle class these days. As far as I can tell, the middle class folks I know are surviving with resigned grace and a teeny tiny bit of humor.
January 28, 2009 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, maybe more than a little.
=D
January 29, 2009 12:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. :o) Like the one guy I know says, "As long as I don't have to move back home and live in Mom's basement, I'll be doing alright."
January 29, 2009 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Donal, I have lived on next to nothing for almost ten years. Everything is relative. You get used to some things.
And you get used to going without.
I just found the web and I actually have periods of happiness.
ha.
You and TheraP and Bali and others are really taking a look at what might be in store for a new American Middle Class.
Interesting perspectives.
January 28, 2009 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have had a mid to upper middle class income for most of our married life, while living a lifestyle more suited to a lower middle class family. We never tried to "keep up w/ the Jones'." We never got ourselves into debt. The result was that we were able to save our way into having enough money to educate our kids, help them get launched as adults and now live a comfortable lifestyle. Lots of "stuff" has never been a part of the way we live. People are going to be forced to live with less, and once they realize they can be happy without it, we'll be headed in the right direction.
January 29, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
The middle class means different things to almost everyone, where I think the problem comes from is the "consumption" class versus the "middle" class.
For me the definition for "consumption" class would be this friend of mine from high school. We both worked at a local golf course when we were sixteen, at after graduating from high school he stayed at the golf course, after ten years there he is assistant superintendant and probably makes around sixty thousand a year. He has five cars and a 4000 square foot house, he recentely tried to get me to go in with him on an RV. The guy has a huge carbon footprint, and he is the quintensential white guy with some college. Very conservative and very christian.
My guess is the suburbs are filled with people like my friend and it is not possible to keep creating enough blue collar jobs to support the lifestyle of these kind of middle class people and it may not be desirable anyway. At some point consumption class is going to come to an end. Trying to artifically prop up certain sectors is just prolonging the inevitable.
January 29, 2009 9:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Kudos for coining this phrase. I like it....
As for the question: "... will people manage to be happy with less?" I think yes, b/c it's probably the only way to be happy.
January 29, 2009 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, your topic is the infamous bourgeoisie, one of my favorites.
I read this today, and, believe it or not, it has a lot of highly related stuff in it, addressing many of the same exact things you are pondering:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/02/090202fa_fact_secor
except that it refreshingly teases your brain by looking at it by presenting the from an entirely different frame and a totally different set of problems and history. I highly recommend it to you; based on your essay, I think you will enjoy it a great deal.
P.S. Anyone interested in Iranian society should definitely read it as well.
January 29, 2009 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink