The Purpose of a Vibrant Middle Class

The Purpose of a Vibrant Middle Class
I got an email from a friend and a reader of this blog, which always makes me happy, with a link to this article: The case against the middle class. It is a very interesting read. Essentially the author looks at the state of the world today and the so called leaders of the middle class (for example unions) and asks is a middle class all that good for the world. The author gives a thorough indictment of the middle class lifestyle, and to quote “the Faustian bargain” we made to achieve it. What the author failed to convince me of however was that the middle class was bad, because he failed to address its purpose.
As much as we love that the middle class allows us to purchase homes, own multiple cars, and have a flat screen in every room that is not why society needs a middle class. Salon recently ran an article: What is a "good" job, anyway. The take away from this piece is that unionization turned factory work once a dangerous and even deadly low paying job you worked till you died, into a job that you’d want with benefits, sensible hours, good pay, and a retirement plan. The author of the first article portrays this as the Faustian bargain that increased the cost of doing business in this country to the point that large companies looked overseas for cheaper labor, and our government looked to military engagement to satisfy the appetites of the new middle. Again, some responsibility for American military and corporate involvement in South America, and the Middle East could probably fall to the middle class but only so much that they accepted external options as the only viable solutions, because that is what they were told were the only viable solutions available. This however fails to be a case against the middle class. This is in fact a case against consumerism.
A vibrant middle class is the engine of development. Lest we forget along with the two cars, and the flat screen comes the time to pursue your inner passions. People think success is a personal triumph. It is why we shower so much praise on the successful. But this praise quickly turns into an almost divine worship. We tend to think of the successful as innately capable of what has not been possible before them, instead of how we should view them; a statistical eventuality. Scientific history is littered with multiple people making breakthroughs at nearly the exact same instance. This has as much to do with a divine hand as it does with the shear volume of people looking at the problem. Along with the consumerism pursuits of the middle class comes the millions of middle class college students, the entrepreneur class, the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world.
Success is a pure numbers game, the more people trying to be successful the more likely a few of them will succeed. A vibrant middle class creates a pool of people for whom success extend beyond the mere survival of those living near the poverty level and conservation of wealth of the upper class. For the middle class success almost necessarily means the creation of something new. Right now the middle class is shrinking, and we are desperately seeking a way out of this hole dug for us by the supposed conservers of wealth. There is this belief that the wealthy in this country are the creators of the prosperity, and that if it weren’t for them we’d still be in darkness. If you wish to accept this construct it must be realized that it is not the full picture. I imagine prosperity as a camp fire. To create the fire you need someone who owns a tree, someone to chop the wood, and someone start the fire. The upper class owns the tree, the lower class chops the wood, and the middle class creates the sparks that lights fire. Without enough people to do any of these tasks we would still be in darkness.