Week Forty-One: Saving the Middle Class

So I was asked what my solution was, to the shrinking middle class,and despite thinking on it whenever I could, and trying to find viable unbiased information about the problem, I have to say this: I don't have one.

That is not to say there is no solution. In fact, there are many solutions, many things, many strategies. Many thing are possible to grow the middle class once more.

Of course, there is a catch.

It can't be just one group, one person who words towards it. It requires more than the government saying let's do this. It means corporations, businesses, people, need to work together, or at least share a common goal.

Yeah, you see the problem there.

It's the working together thing, to make the world a better place? We haven't quite mastered that in, you know, all our years.

I hear Noah and his family was pretty good at it? Saved all those animals, and mankind. Beyond that, I think we may not get along very well at all. The whole war thing, and genocide thing. All those killings, and the bombings, and the general arguing like toddlers.

The working together thing is a bit difficult.

Which means we need a unifying force. And in the past very long time that major unifying choices have, well, been either martial or revolutionary. In other words, we need a world war, or a great innovation. Something that requires new factories to be made, new jobs to use, to deal with.

In short, we need something that creates a whole nother job field in order to unify the middle class. Me? Well, if you get me started, I will inform you starkly that man kind ought to explore the stars. Can you imagine building in space? Talk about a construction contract!

I think our next unifying force ought to be the stars. I think if the major world powers could stop being toddlers long enough to see a real solution, they might see something food there too. But they are toddlers, and think not of their children, and grandchildren, but of their voters and the media.

Failing this, we return to the heart of the problem. We need an economic motivator (even if Space isn't is, just yet.). What sort of economic motivator?

Two weeks isn't enough for me to know. The greatest minds in our country either do not know, or are not being consulted. Either way would not surprise me. The biggest thinkers in our country say they don't know. Maybe the internet?

But here's the thing. The internet already has a work force, and that work force isn't near retiring, isn't growing significantly, and most companies based off of the internet, well, they don't need tens of thousands of employees, though the employees they have, once they are successful, tend to be middle class at least.

Here's the thing though. There will always be poor. There will always be rich. It's mankind's nature, and the very definition of poor is always changing, the amount of money differs from town to town, not just country to country. There will always be rich, and super rich, and why-are-you-even-here,-how-did-you-make-that-much,-and-Luck's-hand-is-on-you rich. But the most fragile class is the middle class, the spending class, the well educated, willing to work hard and spend money class that worked to get to that spot, and worked hard, and some how made the right moves.

I don't have the answers. I don't have the reasons, and I'm not even sure I have the question. But I do know that something needs to be done to help. I just don't know what.

One Final Byte: Happy Valentine's Day! (AKA Halloween minus the costumes.)