Arthur,
Perhaps my condensation of misery and prosperity is premature. Perhaps
someone else will re-invent misterity when times are clearer!
Historians tend not to dwell on the condition of the masses when an empire
or a civilization is in decline (if that is what is happening now), but
only on the follies or mistakes of the elite. But I think there's always
been a middle-class. (It depends on what you in Canada call middle-class.
Is it the same as Americans? What Americans call middle-class is what we in
Europe call working-class -- or at least we did until recently. Anyhow,
what I call middle-class is what Americans would call the
professional-class or upper middle-class. So I'll call it U-class in what
follows.)
I think there's always been a U-class. In Medieval society the rich
landowners and royalty always needed a small select band of advisors to
oversee their serfs, to collect the rent, to control their soldier-guards
and personal servants, to look after money and treasures, personal doctors
and lawyers -- and, simply, but importantly (if a landowner was sensible),
public opinion feedback in case some sort of rebellion might be in the
offing. It was this U-class that grew enormously in the industrial
revolution as many new individuals burst through as the new super-rich
industrialists. I would say that in this country this was around 15% of the
population about a century ago. I would say that this U-class is about 25%
of the population now in an advanced country. In one sense most of this
U-class are "merely" the highly-paid servants of the very rich, but
culturally they are much the same. They send their children to the same
highly select schools of the very rich and their young people go to the
same select universities. (This is very clear in Europe and I think it's
happening rapidly now in America, even if not in Canada yet.)
A good example is given by Crystia Freeland who wrote the long article I
posted earlier -- "The New Global elite". She herself is not rich but as a
top-flight (and well-paid) journalist, she's comfortable when socializing
with the very rich and can probably afford to send her children (if she has
any) to the same schools as the very rich. Her children would grow up in
the same milieu as the very rich and would possibly marry one of them.
While the very rich don't have the same number of personal servants as they
used to in pre-industrial days today's complexity means that they need even
more meritocratic advisors. I would lump all these (the rich plus the
U-class) together as one fairly homogenous elite class as against the
masses with a distinctively different culture. (Of course, there's movement
of individuals going on between them, and there are many "inbetweeners" but
this is a relatively small proportion of the whole.)
Keith
At 08:49 05/01/2011 -0500, Arthur wrote:
We seem to be going back to an earlier era. We can see the problems but
there is no ideological road map to guide us out of the miserity So we
see the problems, write about them, but at a loss to know what to do.
Maybe universality and the middle class were really blips in the long road
of history.
Arthur
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 7:28 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION
Subject: [Futurework] The rise of miserity
We're now living in a quantum world of superimposed states -- of
Shrodinger's Paradox in which the cat is alive and not alive at the same
time. Of inflation and deflation going on simultaneously. Of fabulous
incomes for some but declining wages in real terms for most. Of enormous
enhancements in efficiency but lower welfare for the needy. Of higher
skills than ever before in history for some but of mass literacy and
numeracy skills lower than a century ago. Of highly profitable
multinational corporations but bankrupt governments. A new word needs to
be coined -- "miserity".
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>/
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>/
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