There's no economic crisis in this part of the world, except for the high inflation over the past year or so. The "middle class," however vaguely defined, is generally agreed to have risen from 7% of the population in 2000 to about 25-30% of the population, much higher in the big cities. The difference between Moscow of 8 years ago, when I moved here, and the Moscow of today is unbelievable. Moscow of the $4.50 dollar cups of coffee and $15 cups of ice cream. Within a two block radius of my apartment are now two sushu restaurants, a Chinese restaurant, McDonald's, two Russian cuisine fast-food places, Starlight Diner, two beauty salons, a specialty coffee-machine store, a computer store, a Mitsubishi outlet, one Starbucksesque coffee shop, a billion cigarette and beer kiosks, a gambling hall, at least three banks, an outdoor kebab cafe, and a bookstore/music store. Most of these have opened in the past 3-4 years. Absolutely none were here 20 years ago of
course.
Man, I'm hungry. Time to go to McDonald's!
--- On Mon, 7/21/08, dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org> wrote:
> From: dredmond at efn.org <dredmond at efn.org>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Capitalism's new working class consumers
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, July 21, 2008, 1:52 PM
> On Mon, July 21, 2008 9:10 am, Marvin Gandall forwarded:
>
> > Boom time for the global bourgeoisie
> > By Jim O’Neill