Serious academic question. Are there any valid theories as to how a nations economy can thrive without a Middle Class?

[shockedcanadian]

Serious question. If any of you are students or have a theory or book to direct me to, please give me a Readers Digest version here.

I can't for the life of me see how vast discrepancies can ensure a thriving, sustainable marketplace based on consumption, when wealth, industries and jobs leave. Debt isn't infinite.

 

[MisterBeale]

I think that is a false proposition.

Who ever suggested that the oligarchs had growth, or "thriving," in mind? I remember once seeing Bill Clinton state, off the record in a candid video, that for "sustainability," to actually work, the elites needed to aim at 'zero,' growth.


. . . tell me why it needs to thrive if you don't have middle class? Hasn't the wealth disparity been growing for the past fifty years? Why should it stop now?



I mean, seriously. For those that have several billion, that would seem to last a while, and anyone else?


The corporatocracy's attitude is generally, fuck'em.

 

[Concerned American]

Serious question. If any of you are students or have a theory or book to direct me to, please give me a Readers Digest version here.

I can't for the life of me see how vast discrepancies can ensure a thriving, sustainable marketplace based on consumption, when wealth, industries and jobs leave. Debt isn't infinite.

With the events that have unfolded globally during the last year. It seems clear that private industry and the middle class are not the point. When the populace becomes dependent on the government for their, income, sustenance and healthcare, we will no longer be anything more than a communist satellite third world country.

 

[Indeependent]

Serious question. If any of you are students or have a theory or book to direct me to, please give me a Readers Digest version here.

I can't for the life of me see how vast discrepancies can ensure a thriving, sustainable marketplace based on consumption, when wealth, industries and jobs leave. Debt isn't infinite.

You are assuming the uber wealthy care and that the poor are educated well enough by their masters to understand.

 

[DudleySmith]

If you're Chairman Mao or Josef Stalin, you did great without a pesky whining middle class who could vote. Communism and corporate monopoly get along just fine these days, as both 'free trade' and Marxism end up with the same results for the vast majority of the masses. The only distinctions between them is the rhetoric. There is no difference between a corporate bureaucracy a Communist one. With AI and robotics coming along nicely, the uber-wealthy now want you all dead; you're polluting the Earth and they want to turn the planet into their own private park and zoo.

 

[Supposn]

Serious question. If any of you are students or have a theory or book to direct me to, please give me a Readers Digest version here. ...

ShockedCanadian, serious answer is there are no such valid theories. The overwhelming majority of middle-income families are wage earning families.

Due to Employers’ wage differential practices, wage rates are driven up from the bottom; if foreman wages are increased, their crews’ wages are not also necessarily increased; but if their crews’ wages are increased, employers find it necessary to increase their foremen’s’ wages.

Supply side economics and minimum wage rates of poor purchasing power do not financially promote robust wage-earning families or enterprises sensitive to the wellbeing of their middle and/or lower income customers. Respectfully, Supposn