品正隨筆
品正隨筆

財經傳媒三十年老兵, 歷任香港經濟一週社長/道瓊斯中國地區總編輯, 在香港成長, 在內地創業, 在美國上市, 曾旅居英國, 但最愛在台灣流連,

After reading: How can the middle class rewrite the future?

Title: We Have Never Been Middle Class: How Social Mobility Misleads US by Hadas Weiss; Key Point: We have been misled, the middle class never existed.



This book, although it may seem a bit extreme, is very enlightening.


We have always believed, or have always been taught: as long as you work hard, you can succeed!


However, research evidence from Germany, Israel, the United States, and more shows how such beliefs can lead us toward the goal of accumulating assets in our lives, but the end result is self-destruction.


Faced with stagnant wages, reduced benefits, rising health and education costs, financial crises, and tax inequities, where should the middle class go?


Does the middle class exist?


While we've been talking about the "middle class," much of what we've said is contradictory.


We worry about the decline or squeeze of the middle class, for example, compared to just a decade ago, fewer people in developed countries consider themselves middle class, and, judging by trends, those on the fringes of class Man will soon fall over the edge.


Yet the headlines in the newspapers have always inspired the world: when we look around the world, we see that the middle class is actually rising in different developing countries;


The numbers of ambitious happiness seekers in places like China, India, Brazil and South Africa are ballooning. In those old tricks, there are those who question the number of the middle class while arguing that there really is a middle class to be in or out of.


This book repeatedly argues that this class does not actually exist.


One way to demonstrate this fact is to look at the studies that have been done over the years to determine membership in the middle class. Just look through the studies and analyses published by consultancies, think tanks, development agencies, sales offices, government departments and central banks to find that the criteria used in the studies are as divergent as the conclusions they reach.


Statisticians especially have difficulty finding ways to come up with a universally applicable measure.


People in rich countries enjoy living, working and spending conditions that are coveted by the vast majority of the world’s population (including those most likely to be identified as the promising new middle class globally), and what taxonomy can cover them all go in? ...


Therefore, the middle class has never been clearly defined, but it gives everyone hope, and makes everyone "happy" to be forced by capitalism to compete for power and profit, thinking that they still have a chance to go upstream, but in fact, for most people , the pursuit of accumulating wealth is a trap, and in the end even oneself is "capitalized".


No matter how hard we try, we are tools that others use to create surpluses. "Everyone is so busy fighting for interests that they can't see themselves being exploited, and the class is duplicated" has become a fate that our "middle class" cannot get rid of.


The elegy of the middle class originally had its universality: in the face of wage stagnation, financial crisis, and injustice in taxation, how can the middle class rewrite the future?

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