The Fallacy of the Middle-Class: Overcoming Social Resentment (XXVI). Epilogue
We all who are still alive (regardless our difficulties) have survived this year 2020. Today is a celebration day to cherish that we have survived. Thankfulness is the word. Aussi it is the last day of the 2020s decade. A decade in which our technology excessive greed developed the “smartphone” communications mobility to extremes proportions affecting economic sectors and industries that shouldn’t have been disrupted that way.
The 2020s is the decade of the “Smartphone addiction”. The 2020s is also a decade in which our mobile technology production and consumption of things has created our most dangerous tool or outil addiction that has proved to be convenient but dangerous. This little black rectangle box called “Smartphone” has the power of good and evil. Logically the benefits have been experienced by all of us. But this little thin unregulated black box called “Smartphone” with the Internet included has been damaging our perceptions of reality and eventually, we will end up confusing what is real with what is virtually apparent. Our “excessive” disruptive mobile technologies have affected social relationships, our traditional jobs and “modus operandi” works, our education, our arts, our financial transactions, our privacy rights, our industries and economic sectors, our brain capacity to think properly and solve issues, and what is more important our mental and physical health.
The 2020s has been a decade in which the Middle-Class has suffered the most. The global expansion of the cheap products manufactured in Asia has wiped the local production of many poor and developed nations. At its roots, even in the most developed countries. Many of the products and services served by the Middle-Class entrepreneurial efforts are now served by asian companies for 1/10th or even less of the cost of making it locally. And the same Middle-Class, of powerful nations as the United States, has started to feel its shrinking capacity. High-tech products and services without regulation is killing the Middle-Class, because now this also has to afford these new gadgets with the same salary, that were not existent in the past. Eleonora Escalante Strategy is not against technology per se, there are beautiful devices and inventions that are in use to save lives (particularly in the medical area), but we are against the non-regulated excessive way in which technology is being utilized in other areas, just for the sake of doing money, without any type of scientific and sociologist-philosophical discussions at high levels. We are against the usage of non-sense technologies, that are being launched into the market, without pilot project testings that measure the impact in a 20-30 years life span of a generation. Eleonora Escalante Strategy stands up against the practice of venture capitalism for tech that is hurting our societies, products and services deployed without any type of integral analysis, technologies that are opening the door not just to hackers and to cyberterrorism, but to our own self destruction.
Additionally, as a cherry on top, this last year of the 2020s decade was characterized by a global pandemic. A pandemic that locked us for months, a tiny virus that has shaken the roots of our planet imbalanced situation with the environment, with financial crazy products as the cryptocurrencies, with racism, with abuse of power, with social inequality, with our insane brain-sick business models, with our life-style trends and with the lack of caring or disconnection of the impact between global supply chains/global state of commerce and each of our local productive “communities”.
When it comes to the issue of social inequality, this saga was merely a philosophic reminder that the Middle-Class is simply a baby social group of 100 years (12% of the global population). And we have a lot of work to do to strengthen it to, protect it, to raise it, and to educate it integrally. “The Fallacy of the Middle Class: Overcoming social resentment” has been a journey that already ended last week. But I promised to deliver a proper closing. Nevertheless, I won´t extend it. We all want to turn the page of the 2020 and begin the 2021. In consequence, I decided to make a summary and conclusions chapter with a rattling approach, a balanced table of the key take-aways. As follows:
The Fallacy of the Middle-Class: Overcoming Social Resentment
| Episode | Date Published | Name of the Chapter | Key Take-Away |
| I | 13th October | Toccata | Those societies with growing successful and ample middle classes are the most flourishing-Happiest balanced and wealthy societies on earth. The wealthiest can´t continue building powerful economic empires without closing the inequality gap. The outline of the saga was provided. |
| II | 16th October | Purpose-Rationality-Philosophy of this saga | Purpose: Create a true-hearted personal awareness that our social economic condition differences must not be a cause for social resentment or destruction. Rationale: Intuitive discovery of the truth, promoting peace between people, understanding how to apply ethical virtues when we write. Philosophy: Throw new logical reasoning on how to think differently when analyzing our society most critical issues. |
| III | 21st October | Historical Origins of the Social Class Structure | Social classes appeared as a result of social response to the rise of urban civilizations and tech innovations which challenged different industrial revolutions during history. From savagery, barbarism, urbanism to technological slavery? |
| IV | 23rd October | Towards a Multidimensional Definition of a Social Class | A social class has to be defined at least using 8 dimensions:Integral well-being, Education and Cultivation of Spirit, Access to Medical Care, Living Standards, Social Mobility, Human Rights, Capacity or promise to grow a new type of wealth and Status of Happiness. |
| V | 27th October | Who is the Middle Class? | How marketers, governments, international cooperation agencies define the MIddle-Class? By income distribution, industry degree of sophistication and professional occupation. |
| VI | 30th October | Do you belong to the Global Middle-Class? | The concept of the Middle-Class is biased towards income distribution. The OECD-World bank Middle-Class concept has to be reviewed, because the income distribution brackets in pppd is not correct. According to Brookings, OCDE, World Bank, Ernst & Young, and Bank of America, the annual income for a middle-class household starts at US$14,600 per year, but for our consulting house Eleonora Escalante Strategy, the lower limit bracket should be at least US$28,800/year, regardless the country. The key differential factor about the Middle-Class belonging should be integral education. |
| VII | 3rd November | Ethical Values Exposed | The social stratification definitions can´t be conceived as a demographic income “individual ratio” of pppd for the next generations’ perceptions. To belong to the middle class (low tier) in El Salvador is equal to be an average low class in the US (in annual income per household median terms). The most common ethical values that we can find in the middle-class families (family of orientation and procreation) are sincerity, persistence, courage under suffering, love and kindness. |
| VIII | 6th November | The Basic Cognitive map of the Global Middle Class | The most basic cognitive map that has created or originated the Middle-class is the cognitive map of belief about causality, composed by givens, means and ends. The end or Middle-Class purpose is to live with an integral “bien-être” confort based on working hard, raising economic income to an annual range between US$28,800 toUS$175,200/year, getting married, having children & educate them at the best possible academic institutions, maintaining a family strong social group of peers, in parallel of being a respectable social citizen who cares for a charity cause (of a specific personal preference). |
| IX | 10th November | How does the Middle-Class live? | Generation X will be in charge to review and correct mental paradigms, particularly when it comes to the wrong utilization of the most recent disruptive technologies. We shared an example of a Salvadoran LMIC family earning US$28,800/year (before taxes) and analyzed a 50/30/20 budgeting rule scenarios. |
| X | 13th November | Debt as ACOT (A Cherry on Top) | The lifestyle of a Middle-Class family is restricted by budget- resources, time and available options. The sources of funds of a Middle-Class family are: employment wages, remittances support or intl. aid, second entrepreneurial activities, real estate assets, financial income and debt. Many families of the Middle-Class are trapped in debt as a way of living.Debt should be used cautiously, and only as a cherry on top. Debt is not to fix what you don´t have, is to catapult your economic growth, knowing that you are able to pay all your obligations without any type of trouble. |
| XI | 16th November | Debt as ACOT (Part II) | Using debt when families or companies do not have savings, sets them up for an economic organic failure, inevitably. The importance of saving is crucial. In simple terms, if you wish to use debt (short term or obligations of one year max duration), you have to ask yourself first the following question: Can I survive and cover all my wants and needs without revenue streams (salary wage or income from my business) for at least one year? If you are not able to do this, you can´t get indebted neither ask for a credit card or short term loans. As a rule of thumb, if any of us (families or businesses) wish to raise long term debt to buy long term assets, we must hold at least between 20% to 30% in cash on hand (savings) in our pockets. |
| XII | 17th November | International Cooperation can help to overcome multidimensional poverty | Multidimensional Poverty may be left behind if the international cooperation has the will to help. |
| XIII | 18th November | Multidimensional Poverty happens in the Middle-Class | Multidimensional poverty exists at every level of the Middle-Class, not just at the segment of low-class segment of the population. Wrongly it is assumed that Middle-Class families are not poor, but that is not the case. If one or more of the deprivations in standard of living, education, health, economic security, housing quality or neighborhood quality exist, a Middle-Class family is still living under multidimensional poverty. |
| XIV | 25th November | Without Education there is no Middle-Class | The meaning of being elysian is to be blissful, delightful, to be content, educated and an integral Middle-Class human being. Education helps us to be elysian. Analytical integral minds require integral education, and we discovered through education that the Global Middle-Class is “smaller and less well-off” than it is. Eleonora Escalante Strategy has categorized that a Middle class family household of four, has to at least earn US$28,800 per year before taxes, up to US$175,200 per year. This represents only 12% of the global population. Approx. 74% of the global population is low income class (poor) and still 10% of the global population is extreme poor. This leave us with only 4% as a high-income class. It is impossible to elevate our societies from poor to middle class without integral elysian education. |
| XV | 27th November | Towards a new paradigm of the Middle-Class | The paradigm definition is the conceptual framework that permits the explanation of the middle class existence: why the current economic system has not benefited the Middle-Class to grow more? Because the Middle-Class is simply so new, as a new sprung kid in our history. The paradigm of the Middle class is “There is not Middle-Class without high quality education and financial wellness”. The Aspirations and wants of the Global middle class are built around leaving poverty behind, to be free of debt, to be educated integrally and to find a stable source of income. The needs of the middle class vary according to the lifestyle of the household. In the context of new disruptive technologies, the middle class is on risk to be substituted by automation and artificial intelligence. |
| XVI | 30th November | Democracies depend on the Middle-Class and the Society Educators | Given the paradigm of the Middle-Class how can we make it grow and strengthen it? The answer is by strengthening the professors that could be the best educators we find and these need to be rewarded properly (as middle-Class citizens). A democracy can exercise its empowerment only if it has a well prepared Middle-Class. |
| XVII | 1st December | The responsibility of the Middle Class in Democracies | The middle-class is the intellectual and efficient fiduciary of any democratic system. We refreshed which are the most relevant functions for successful democracies: Development of a welfare safety net, provision of common democratic goods for all, control of economic cycles, correction for the unfair tendencies of the free-enterprise system, proper taxation policies, and active citizen consultation. |
| XVIII | 4th December | The Middle-Class Competitive Strategy Deal | Nothing is a waste of time when it comes to dedicating time to the preparation of multiple skills, capabilities, capacities and hobbies. For the Middle-Class, the more diversified is the potential revenue streams, the ampler will be the potential to earn money from different sources. Through education (and excellent professors), most talented students can build a life to earn a doctorate and become researchers or academic professors. The entrepreneurial journey is also another path to keep aside. Wise investing in real assets (estates) and financial instruments, maintaining your savings and pension retirement can also help you to amplify your financial security. |
| XIX | 7th December | The SDGs of the Middle Class | Is the SDG agenda attainable for 2030? No. Without a robust and strong Middle-Class representing at least to 50% of the global population, the SDGs goals are not a reality. It is of extreme urgency to connect the dots between the SDGs benchmarks and the Middle-Class growth. The new disruptive technologies in such an imbalanced global commerce, will only increase the gap between the rich and the poor. |
| XX | 10th December | The Happiness of the Middle-Class Illustrated | Happiness is not a life-style neither can be defined in terms of economic standards. Happiness is multidimensional, and is a roller-coaster journey. The middle-class is happy when they answer yes to the question: Am I lucky to live as a Middle-Class citizen? |
| XXI | 15th December | About the human rights of the Middle-Class | Human rights of the Middle-Class are measured in terms of integrity empowerment and freedom to choose for the present and the future. An observatory of the Middle-Class human rights is required. The big issue in the MIddle-Class is envy, that comes when the meritocracy system is not well defined between high quality empowerment and cheap productivity. Finally, Modern Slavery happens in the Middle-Class, when integrity is lost, many middle-class workers keep themselves in agony and debt bondage. Mistreated psychologically employees or servers are the most inefficient form of labor ever devised by man. |
| XXII | 18th December | MOOC online learner can trigger social inequality? | MOOC without any type of regulation or protection of contents for reasonable quality standards may destroy the whole educational system for the long run. Causing more inequality than before. The MOOC drama relies in the lack of standards to qualify instructors at a local, national, regional and international accreditation levels. |
| XXIII | 20th December | What is the fallacy of the Middle-Class? | The false belief of the Middle-Class is to conceive that the Middle-Class is already defined as a concept, that it is well developed, or that it is a strong core group of the global population. The Middle class is simply a baby social group that started to crawl on all fours. As a baby, the Middle-Class needs to be protected and groomed, to flourish and grow. |
| XXIV | 22nd December | Moving Forward to overcome social resentment. | The French revolution is here to remind us of social inequality, and with less than 100 years of existence, the Middle-Class has the huge responsibility to help instead of creating obstruction when people are trying to leave poverty behind. Resentment because others have initiated a social mobility path should not be allowed in our souls and minds. The middle Class is so tiny everywhere, that it is not moral, nor fair to keep social resentment towards those who are scaling up in their social mobility journey. |
| XXV | 24th December | Where do we go from here? | The life of the french painter artist Pierre Auguste Renoir as an example of social mobility and Middle-Class successful path. |
This is it for the 2020. I will see you next year as of the 18th of January. Eleonora Escalante Strategy is going to take 15 days of annual vacations. I will come back with a new saga: “High Quality vs Low-Price Bargain: The current dichotomy”. I will visit several examples of products and services from different economic sectors explaining what is really the big issue of our current globalization status of affairs. There is a philosophy behind this commercial antagonism, that is shaking the foundations of the modern economy.
See you on the week of the 18th of January 2021. Thank you for reading to me. Muchas gracias por todo.
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WISHING YOU GOOD HEALTH ABOVE ALL.
Love, economic prosperity and joy are abundant when we are not sick.
Be safe by practicing all your ethical values when it comes to protecting others and yourself against COVID19. Cheers!
Eleonora Escalante Strategy 