Is the middle class an aberration?

[raccoon]

I wonder if it is. It seems most societies in history that I know anything about didn't have one, or if there was, it was a very small middle class.

[baldguy]

1. America is an aberration, too.

Does that mean we shouldn't fight to keep it?

[shenmue]

11. How?

How is America an aberration?

:shrug:

[baldguy]

14. Govt of The People, by The People & for The People isn't something that comes about naturally.

Before 1789, there were almost none. Monarchies and oligarchies are more normal.

BUT! After 1789, average People around the world got it into their heads that they could govern THEMSELVES!

[Rex]

2. It is, we are now seeing the middle class turn into the working poor.

[Selatius]

3. How do you define a middle class?

That's the problem. If you define what you see inside America today using terms from the 1700s, most people would be considered working class, and a few would be called the bourgeoisie. That is, they are business owners, merchants, shareholders, executives, landlords, and professionals like doctors and lawyers or anyone who sells his talents directly to customers. Laborers of the working class, on the other hand, usually sell their labor to their employer instead of directly to customers.

[hfojvt]

13. that seems to be a trivial distinction too

When I had my own store, it lost money, for seven years. So I moved way up, income wise and in leisure time and benefits, when I closed it.

[jgraz]

4. The middle class has to be consciously created and maintained

And when the middle-class voters explicitly give up their power by voting plutocrats into power, they'll likely see their economic situation collapse very quickly.

[baldguy]

5. Now, its being consciously destroyed.

[jgraz]

6. Which is much easier to do

especially if idiot middle-class voters think outlawing gay marriage is more important than their own economic status.

[SoCalDem]

10. Which is PRECISELY why we need a SECULAR government

in order to preserve the middle class AND religious freedoms..

Secular heads of state tend to the needs of the MASSES, and the individual groups can tend to their own spiritual needs..

[jgraz]

15. What do you think the main function of religion is?

To con the masses into accepting their lot in life. After all, blessed are the poor. :eyes:

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Sadly, we have a form of government in which legislators

in both parties sell their votes to the highest bidder. Once, even the most cynical politician had to keep in mind the interests of the common voters. In this era, the mass media have become the middlemen who deliver votes with their advertising and with their opinion-forming broadcasting. Therefore the politicians are beholden to the owners of the media and the well-heeled capitalist forces (pretty much the same people who own the media) who offer to finance their ads in exchange for their enactment of oligarchic policies. The voter has become pretty much unimportant to the politicians, and the interests of the average voter therefore have no representation whatsoever.

[Quantess]

7. Yes, they are like bums who take resources that rightfully should go to the wealthy.

Just kidding. I'm in a cynical mood.

[The2ndWheel]

8. It's all about cheap energy

If there is enough, people don't have to be slaves. If there isn't, people will be. If we insist on economics. We don't have to insist on that, but if we don't, we don't have all this stuff.

[riverdeep]

16. What about the poor countries of today?

Why don't they have slaves instead of poor farmers out working the fields? You don't think there has been a general shifting of consciousness away from slaveholding?

[The2ndWheel]

18. There has been, but only because it's cheaper to pay them something

Everything is mass produced, so consumers are needed...hell, required.

I can't even call it cheap energy, since we pay a price environmentally to use it.

We're basically made of the same stuff as oil and coal. It does the work that humans used to do. It does it for free(not really, but you know). The same way kings could live off the blood of slaves, that energy we found in the ground allows anyone connected to the global socio-economic system to live like...what am I saying...probably better than most kings ever did.

If we have cheap energy, we'll be alright(except environmentally). If we don't, there are more potential slaves today than ever before.

[shenmue]

9. No.

There were middle-class people in all societies that had merchants. Which is most of them, once they get to a large population.

The very way you phrase it bespeaks some kind of weird prejudice.

[Cleita]

12. Before we built cities we were tribal.

In tribal societies, resources are gathered and shared in the community or they are "communists" economically. In this way everyone shares in the fortunes of the tribe no matter how elderly or handicapped they might be. Idealistically, they get the food and resources they need to survive and mostly this is true. If there is famine, everyone starves. If there is bounty everyone benefits.

However, there have always been nobles or aristocracy (chiefs), religious VIPs (priests or shamans), warriors and the workers. Often members did more than one function e. g. worker or farmer and warrior when needed. Kings and nobles usually were both warriors and chiefs. In more evolved societies a merchant and skilled craftsman class evolved, which you might call middle class.

I think a middle class is the norm in a society that hasn't been co opted by a ruling class. The reason we haven't seen it in history is because of constant warfare that elevated the nobles/warriors into positions of wealth through force with workers being forced to pay tribute or being even enslaved to the chiefs keeping them at subsistence levels. In the case of the conquered, only the aristocracy can afford luxury goods and comforts so there isn't a very big need for a mercantile and artisan (middle class) to service them, so that's why they seem very small in comparison to the near starving workers.

My two cents.