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America divided – this concept increasingly graces political discourse in the U.S., pitting left against right, conservative thought against the liberal agenda. But for decades, Americans have been rearranging along another divide, one just as stark if not far more significant – a chasm once bridged by a flourishing middle class.
Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, believes the ongoing death of “middle America” has sparked the emergence of two countries within one, the hallmark of developing nations. In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Temin paints a bleak picture where one country has a bounty of resources and power, and the other toils day after day with minimal access to the long-coveted American dream.
In his view, the United States is shifting toward an economic and political makeup more similar to developing nations than the wealthy, economically stable nation it has long been. Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States in an effort to document how inequality has grown in America.
The 2017 World Economic Forum had the answer: "The people who have not benefited from globalization need to try harder to emulate those who have succeeded," and, "'People have to take more ownership of upgrading themselves on a continuous basis.'"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:31PM (1 child)
> but in England I have no chance of growing up and becoming the King.
This is a stupid comment. The prime minister runs the country. Of recent prime ministers:
* Theresa May, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, John Major have a pretty middle class background
* David Cameron has a pretty upper class background
How does that compare to recent US presidents? How many recent UK prime ministers are related? How does that compare to US presidents?
It seems to me US is much more similar, politically, to 18th Century UK, before e.g. the Great Reform Act (I don't know 19th Century so well).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:40PM
And don't forget that with a population of about a quarter that of the US, and the PM being up for election whenever the Parliament chooses to have an election, the likelihood of any given Briton becoming the PM at some point is significantly higher just because there's a much smaller population and much larger number of elections.