The middle class by classical definition on wikipedia is “about 25 percent of British society, reported high economic capital, high status of mean social contacts, and both high highbrow and high emerging cultural capital.” however you classify a person by this measure they nearly all have something in common.
Comfortable
What is comfortable, whilst we can look up a dictionary definition of comfortable as well, lets assume that one of the defining factors in modern life is not having to worry about money too much on a day to day basis.
Middle class begets more middle class with the 6% of the elite thats pretty much a solid majority which control the country. That’s leaving out who is actually in power politically, but it’s actually the group of people that who shape the way society functions.
Control
This group has always been in control in one way another through the years even when the country was under a feudal rule. Anything that disturbs this section of society’s distribution of wealth causes concern. Until something threatens this group’s existence or standard of living it doesn’t pay attention to it.
Selfish
Does this group perpetuate the selfish gene? It certainly becomes an interesting mind experiment if we apply the theory to the “group”. I personally cannot see any reason why it shouldn’t.
Inclusive
We came from a society that only allowed certain segments to vote but over time the vote became inclusive. Now in the 2015 UK General Election, can we honestly say that we would want this to be so? Just over 50 years ago since World War II, half a lifetime, we have a political force that ten years ago would have been labelled “racist, fascist, bigots“. Who are these people? Well whilst the group is inclusive to both sides of the political spectrum it contains a percentage that are part of my definition of the comfortable middle class.
Money
What is money? Well I’d would hazard a guess that most people don’t give the monetary system any more thought to that question than say where there Peacocks £2.99 t-shirt is manufactured or what the hourly rate of pay in relation to the UK minimum wage is there. What I can explain in a few sentences is after the financial crash of 2008 occurred, the “central banks” that help governments control the economy started to print money in a slightly different way to the Weimar republic of Germany between 1919-1923. Instead of printing money with paper, the central banks post-2008 generated it with computers.
Debtonomics (New economic term – Economics based on Debt, rather than Capital)
Now in pre-Hitler Germany printing money led to inflation, this led to goods costing more tomorrow than they do today. Too much money in the system, so people needed more wage money to stand still to survive what needs to be bought tomorrow.
Post-2008 computer generated money by mainly the US has caused an unprecedented boom in the stock market. This is the future value that pension companies place in companies they buy into. They want to obtain the highest return on their investment for their stakeholders. The stakeholders are the widows and pensioners who are no longer largely in the tax system paying “work force”.
So much money has been created out thin air, that companies are seeking to add value to their companies not by manufacturing new widgets that society needs nor providing services which are better than their competitors but just acquiring companies that do make things or have a better service product.
The new money printing called “Quantitative Easing”, regards of how it creates money maybe actually causing deflation, many “experts” believe this to be true. Personally with the frequent changes in measuring CPI and the dumping of the RPI in 2013 which lie to believe is hard to choose.
The long-term consequences of global QE are likely to permanently impair living standards for generations to come while creating a false illusion of reviving prosperity.
was said by Guggenheim’s Chairman of Investments and Global Chief Investment Officer, Scott Minerd. 26th March 2015. We are happy that increasingly more “serious people” come to the same conclusion which we posited first a 6 years ago wrote Zerohedge. “The cost of QE is greater than the income lost to savers and investors.”
Summary of QE
We know who QE is screwing and we know who QE is benefitting. Therefore do we need to understand the global economics – nope.
Fit for power? (UK)
We have politicians who want our vote, whose economic advisers are woefully unqualified by anybodies standpoint to navigate the post-2008 economic post-consumer society.
We have a society that may limit our path to inflationary growth because tomorrows manufactured goods will always be cheaper tomorrow and from a country point of view we will allow whole national infrastructure industries to be wiped out by economic rules created in a Keynesian pre-2008 world.
Do supermarket suppliers receive a fair market price for their products?
What will happen to the quality of the arable land in Europe under the stewardship of the European Union?
Middle Class, Working Class – do I care?
I don’t care because these labels aren’t helping anybody in any shape of form.
The monetary system is changing
Bitcoin will be patched in preparation for the lightning network – see Blockstream hires Rusty Russell
The new class system will comprise of those who:
- Really understand money – (as the way money used to be, like gold)
- Those that can create added value with digital money and digit assets
- Those that use it
Dislocation
Such is the dy/dx of change with respect to the understanding of money and wealth transposing on society that any references to class, cease to have any meaning.