Today we will continue with our journey associated with the role of the fragile, new, and newborn Middle-Class which is the key performance factor for the success of democracies. Recapitulating what I wrote yesterday: We, the Middle-Class members have a huge personal obligation on our shoulders when it comes to democracy maintenance, improvement, and sustainability. The Middle-Class is the intellectual and efficient fiduciary of any democratic system. Irrespective that the Middle-Class citizens all over the world are still a minority: because we are basically only around 12% of the global population (1 billion citizens). This counting is duty-bounded to grow during the next 100 years. The goal of all political democratic systems on earth, all over the world is to augment or increase the Middle-Class to become the prosperous majority by the year 2120. It is the only way in which we can leave poverty behind.

Supporting the democratic political system allows the low-class citizens to be considered to jump and become or be part of the Middle-Class. And for that, learning and being literate, educated, through high-quality education is imperative. High-quality education is established and developed through time. High-quality education is not only based on academic content, but it is also based on eminent ethical values that need to be taught since kindergarten. It takes generations to build beautiful brains. And education relies on the most qualified professors.

Repeating again. The paradigm of the Middle Class. Please remember that for Eleonora Escalante Strategy, the new paradigm of the Middle-Class for its expansion in the globe is: to survive, grow or expand through high quality-education skills, and without debt. The democratic model is the incipient political system that fits better for this purpose. And democracies are so new, that it is ridiculous to blame them when we are simply trying to overcome all the forms of existing totalitarianism. We have been polishing democracies for ONLY 231 years. It is so new!. As human beings, we also have been trying to find the proper market mixed economic system that can ignite the strengthening of the Middle-Class nation by nation. Professor Charles Hill has identified 4 broad types of economic systems: (1) a pure private-owned market economy; (2) a public government-owned command economy; (3) a mixed economy where certain sectors of the economy are private, meanwhile others are from the government; and (4) a state-directed economy. Each democratic country has the right to design, test, and choose the best economic system that helps their individuals to leave out of poverty to belong to the Middle-Class. In the process, hybrid economic systems have flourished. This economic system that is built through the years (decades) by trial and error, is particularly successful only for that specific country that has its unique resources on earth. The troubles with globalization happen when the economic model of one country on earth wants to overpass the limits of the others, or wish to be replicated in others without any type of analysis, in poor countries that do not hold the same resources, neither the same particularities. In our search to impose the beautiful economic model of developed nations into developing ones, we have forgotten that each country requires a tailor-made economic model that will help their democracies to improve, and so forth to strengthen that nation’s middle-class.

The most relevant functions for successful democracies. Yesterday I promised you to provide knowledge about the most relevant functions for successful democracies. To be successful, an excellent democracy must meet the following functions (I curated this section and adapted the material based on the text “Relation of the American Government to the American Economic System”, by Richard T. De George. Excerpted from his book “Business Ethics, 4th Edition. Prentice Hall Inc. 1995). Even though this material was written by the author to analyze American Capitalism, I have done an abstraction and adapted it to democracies. Please remember that democracies function only in balanced political systems which are located around the center spectrum.

1. Development of a Welfare Safety Net (for the most vulnerable ones). Among the vulnerable, those who suffer from a temporary or lifelong physical and mental disability, the sick, the elderly, the orphans, the Low-Income Children whose parents are poor, and those who cannot take care of themselves. Democracies also support the unemployed and those entrepreneurs who fail in their companies. A democracy cannot ignore these vulnerable citizens who should not starve for lack of food or health services or for lack of shelter.
2. Provision of Common Democratic Goods for All.  A robust democracy as a political system offers the resources to finance in its entirety or in private-public associations not only the system of territorial connectivity through highways, streets, roads, and bridges; but also adequate and modern public transportation systems, illumination of public spaces, waste collection and protection of environmental resources for its societies. It also provides a first-rate public education system (better or equal to that of the best existing private entities), beautiful and numerous parks, imperturbably perfect drinking-rain-waste water systems for all, in addition to a modern health-care system, with the best alternatives both in medical talent, as in medicines and treatments.
3. Control of Economic Cycles. Democracies will face cyclical fluctuations of benevolent periods of expansion and productivity, followed by periods of economic recession and depression. In addition, climate change disasters or wars, or pandemics will hit the performance of democracies (regardless if the ideology has a tendency to capitalism or to a socialist democracy). This inherent nature of the system must be corrected by anticipating in advance, through adequate fiscal and monetary policies, control of expenses, correct use of public debt, emergency prevention of crises (of all kinds), management of public savings, etc.
4. Correction of the unfair tendencies of the Free Enterprise System. Democracies exercise fair legislation to regulate the excesses of the free enterprise system. These laws are very normal in successful democracies, in order to forge practices against collusion and monopoly. It is imperative to regulate some industries such as NAIQI* technologies, communications, electricity, public transportation, food, and medicines. Without regulations to the excess of a free-market economy we end up in extreme right-wing totalitarianism, and we don´t want that either. Any democracy will inevitably fail if it doesn´t keep the balance between individualist regimes and collectivist administrations. The government is also obliged to actively participate in the quality control of products such as food, health, financing products, education standards, and medicines. _{* NAIQI means Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Supremacy, and the Internet.}
5. Proper Taxation Policies. The government has to finance itself through taxes and the proper use of public debt. Taxes, which do not have to be static, can be dynamically changed according to the needs of the state and based on long-term vision plans in consultation with the citizenry through referendums. Taxation has multiple colors and styles. Whenever a country wants to raise its taxes (property taxes, income taxes, value-added taxes, financial operation taxes, church taxes, etc) democracies consult its citizens first because governments can´t do these types of things without asking permission from the majorities who elected them.
6. Active Citizen Consultation. Democracies offer the provision of referendums in which an entire electorate is invited to vote on a particular proposal and can have nationwide or local forms.  A good democracy always consults its individuals with any type of a high-caliber decision, such as making changes to a new constitution of the Republic, a BREXIT, or the use of public resources for large social projects that tend to be very expensive. Any successful democracy knows that its sources of funds come from taxation to the citizens, in consequence, any big project that requires more international debt or special taxes has to be consulted to the people using a yes-no voting system.

I will stop here for today. I know it is a lot of material to cover when it comes to an integral analysis of the Middle-Class, but we have to go on. Let´s see where we stand in our outline:

Next Friday, we will continue with topic number 12 of the outline: “The deal: Middle-Class Competitive Strategy”. This next subject is 100% original from my own. Please Stay tuned. We are expecting to finish this saga before Christmas, at the latest on the 25^th of December. Blessings, and thank you for reading to me.

Sources of references consulted for this theme:
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares/https://ps.au.dk/en/research/research-projects/the-rise-of-modern-democracy/
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0006.html
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/product/De-George-Business-Ethics-4th-Edition/9780023280207.html
https://www.mheducation.com/highered/product/global-business-today-hill-hult/M9781260088373.html
Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY.  Nevertheless, the majority of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine.  I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy