Middle class

This leaves the Philistines for the great bulk of the nation, a livelier sort of Philistine than ours, and with the pressure and false ideal of our barbarians taken away, but left all the more to himself and to have his full swing.

And as we have found that the strongest and most vital part of English Philistinism was the Puritan and Hebraizing middle class, and that its Hebraizing keeps it from culture and totality so it is notorious that the people of the United States issues from this class and reproduces its tendencies its narrow conception of man's spiritual range and of his one thing needful From Maine to Florida and back again all America Hebraizes.

Difficult as it is to speak of a people merely from what one reads yet that I think one may without much fear of contradiction say.

I mean when in the United States any spiritual side in a man is wakened to activity it is generally the religious side and the religious side in a narrow way.

I see that you have converted by your labors what was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden.

I know that you have created this wealth and are a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world." Why, this is just the very style of laudation with which Mr.

Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauch the minds of the middle classes and make such Philistines of them.

It is the same fashion of teaching a man to value himself not on what he is, not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on the number of the railroads he has constructed or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built.

And I'm Sarah Wolfe, senior economist and strategist on Morgan Stanley's Thematic and Macro Investing team in the Global Investment Office.

Today, the K-shaped economy, the middle class, and how AI could reshape both.

It's Friday, September 11th at 10:00 AM in New York.

The K-shaped economy has been a major theme this year.

At its core, it describes an economy where households are experiencing very different circumstances.

Those with more assets have benefited from rising wealth, while those with less wealth remain more dependent on income and more exposed to increases in essential costs.

But that top versus bottom framing can miss an important part of the story, the middle class.

Sarah, you recently wrote about what it takes to make it to the middle class in America.

But here's what's really happening.

The American Enterprise Institute found that the share of wealth held by the lower than middle class and the core middle class fell from 24% in 1989 to just 8% in 2022.

From 24% to 8%.

Where did that 16% go? Up? It went up.

The wealthy got wealthier, while the middle class got squeezed down into the lower class.

That's 16% of the entire country's wealth transferred upward in one generation.

You've all heard us report the dollar is losing value every day.

You can take the quiz while you're listening to this episode, okay? All you need to do is go to redacted.inc slash quiz, and the link is right there on your screen.

Um, I- there's no chance that we're gonna make up with new opportunities for the amount of jobs that are gonna be lost here.

It's the middle class pinch.

It's really starting to happen.

Just the bloody pub over the road from me.

It's no longer oversubscribed, and there are other schools starting to close, close down.

So that's just one example where people are feeling the pinch.

And the important p- point of that is it's the middle class pinch.

It's really starting to happen.

All of these topics were important.

One of the unique differences with our middle class summit is there are breakout

sessions.

It takes a comprehensive set of stakeholders to contribute to a strong economic ecosystem.

It all needs to be aligned together.

So it's really a big family meeting for the South Florida community to make sure that Affordability is just front and center.

People who are trying to come into the middle class, people who care about it, people who have an opportunity to make sure that it happens, all the contributors to the middle class summit.

And we invite people to come out and make sure they contribute to what we're trying to accomplish here at South Florida Community.

Is it enough to supplement the base pay that they're getting?

But I just don't think we're going to rebuild the middle class here by saying, you know, we're not going to require that employers pay workers a living wage.

You know, there's not an economy in the world, Libby, where there's a middle class where it's been built on anything less than living wages.

I mean, it's just antithetical.

These notions are not reconcilable with one another.

And look, the members of our union benefit from tips as well, on top of being paid a living wage.

It's one reason they've been able to build middle class living standards.

So I don't think anyone's saying we should get rid of tipping, certainly not the unionized members of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Union.