Thank God for the Middle Class

We see the rioting, the terror, the bloodshed all over the world and say to our self, "what's going on?" "What do most of these places have in common?" You can go through the list of supposedly important things for a nation; natural resources, climate, manpower, relion, government, etc. What is the one thing they all seem to lack? It's a middle class. It seems to me that one thing the stable civilizations seem to have in common is a middle class - the bigger the more stable. Most of the turmoil is in places where there are two groups, the haves and have nots. Now you can define middle class in a multitude of ways. Politicians love to do this making this group coincide with what ever attributes they would like or need for their own goals. I'm thinking of it with a broad brush. A recent figure I saw said that only about 12% of the people in this country lived below the poverty level. The unemployment rate is now below 5% and this is even taking into consideration the people who were in the workforce but for one reason or another don't want to work at present. One such group could be working women who decide to drop out of the workforce either to have a family or to stay home and raise them. If you look at the percentage of homes with TV's, cars, washers and dryers, etc.,or look at the percent of married families who own homes, I would have to classify those people as middle class. Some would laugh at calling someone with a family income of $200,000 a year middle class, but they generally work, have obligations that require a great deal of their income, participate in most of lifes functions that occupy the lower middle class families - in a different way,perhaps, and to a greater or lesser extent, but the same.

If you could postulate this to be true than the next question is why to we have a middle class- and such a big one. Could it be capitalism. Could it be that the opportunites of a free capitalistic state cause people to take risks and to work harder. I believe you could be safe in saying that the freer the country both in the realm of governance as well as economics, the larger the middle class.

Because of the above hypothisis, I'd have to agree with George Bush in our need to encourage the spread of freedom and paticipatory government. It takes a free county to have a free economy. It takes a free economy to generate a significant middle class. It takes a significant middle class to generate civil stability.