Posted by wisbaker on August 24, 2012 at 11:26:11 from (184.157.223.164):
In Reply to: Middle class posted by rrlund on August 24, 2012 at 09:42:32:
I think the sociologists used to define our middle class as those that had property (during this time that meant a business), but provided labor for the day to day operation of the business, or working but with means/resources. At that time the lower or working class often didn't have much, didn't own a house or much in the way of property or savings. This middle class was predominately merchants and farmers (farmers defined as owner/operators verses share croppers). This changed in the early part of the 1900's, I have read fairly persuasive arguments that the American middle class as we know it was solely a response the the actions of Henry Ford and his $5.00 a day wage. Buy establishing the $5.00 a day wage, that did have some strings attached in the way of social engineering, he created a situation were the working families actually had enough buying power from wages to accumulate property and wealth while still maintaining standard of living. This wasn't totally altruistic, old Henry saw the newly minted middle class as a source of demand for his automobiles, the Ford Motor company had reached a point were they could make more cars than there was demand for Henry foresaw the need for additional demand. His move was counter to common business wisdom (buy your inputs as cheap as possible, but ended up making him millions of dollars more than he spent. Consider this Green Bay Wisconsin is right around 100,000 people, in its' heyday the Ford Rouge River Complex employed 100,000 people or equivalent to every man women and child in Green Bay Wisconsin. This would provide you enough middle class jobs to support a city of approximately 1,000,000 people. This estimate is made using an average family size of 4 (2 kids) so the plant could directly support 200,000 people. Consider 4 people for every direct employee to supply groceries, housing, education, medical services and entertainment (4 is probably light probably more like 8 or 4 workers and their dependents). I guess we can understand why Detroit is as messed up as it is. We can further discuss the basic economics of wealth creation by both middle and upper class citizens and their economic contributions but then it'll get political and we'll get sent to E-limbo.
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