Does the Middle Class Have a Future?

The middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon, the fruit of commerce, urbanization, modernity, and mechanization. I believe this also makes it contingent. Our way of life is, so to speak, one global catastrophe away from vanishing. Just as a single unlucky accident can send a well-to-do family into crushing poverty, but one environmental disaster could turn the clock back on centuries of human progress.

Let's avoid that mess: apart from some unpredictable catastrophe, how stable is the middle class? In a hundred years, will it still exist? What about in a thousand? Or will wealth inevitably concentrate in the hands of the few aristocrats, leaving scraps for the masses?

To attempt an answer, I believe that what we are seeing now -- and have been since industrialization -- is money changing hands. While this process goes on, there will be a middle class. Once the transfer is complete, those of modest means will be expelled into poverty like a bubble of gas exploding out from the large intestines.

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