> Boom time for the global bourgeoisie
> By Jim O’Neill
> Financial Times
> July 15, 2008
A fine example of US neoliberalism on the ropes. Wall Street is desperate for liquidity and is hoping for a massive bailout from Euro/Asiacapital. The first law of chatting up potential donors: praise them for their wisdom and vision!
> Linked to the current mood, commentators often depict an embattled and
> shrinking middle class, with sharply rising financial inequality. However,
> globally, this is simply not true. One of the most startlingly positive
> phenomena for many generations continues to unfold around the world. We
> are in the middle of an explosion of the world’s middle class.
This is probably as close as Wall Street will come to diagnosing the rise of the developmental state, which has spread from East Asia and Central Europe to the Left-leaning parts of Latin America, Russia, China and Vietnam, and may potentially emerge in several other places. But I think you're right, Marvin - it's not the rise of an American-style middle-class, it's a worldwide professionalization of labor, tied to those developmental states. In my own field, it's something most visible in the explosion of indigenous media markets - pretty much every big country has their own TV programming, videogame culture is growing by leaps and bounds, the world is buying cellphones, etc. Big political changes are on the way...
-- DRR