Despite the "conspiracy" aspect of the video, it's suspicious that it assumes the middle class was an anomaly

Despite the "conspiracy" aspect of the video, it's suspicious that it assumes the middle class was an anomaly ( youtube.com )

submitted 2016-01-04T01:13 by pitenius

2 comments

definitelynotabot 2016-01-04T02:30

I think what he meant was that the rapid growth of the middle class in the US was due to the fact that Europe was decimated after WW2 and we were really the only unplanned economy with manufacturing capabilities. A middle class is something that happens as a side effect of a country having manufacturing jobs. As those jobs move away from one country to another, so does the side effect of a middle class.

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pitenius 2016-01-04T03:02

I'm not certain that "middle class is something that happens as a side effect of a country having manufacturing jobs". It can result from a colonial empire (France, and to a lesser degree England), a trade empire (Venice), or bureaucratic militarism (China). What I found troubling was that the video appeals to viewers who identify as middle class and are worried about their economic stability. It opens with a leftist praise of the growing middle class in what used to be the third world, but closes with "get used to it, you were the anomaly, not the rule".

America might have a stronger middle class if the tax policies were different. Or if the economic policies focused on mercantilism. It's not as simple as "jobs go from one country to another" -- in fact that's a relatively recent phenomenon based in cheap transportation.

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