The slow death of the middle class

As I woke up and checked the news on my computer this morning of the first day of the year 2012, it immediately concerned me to read among the news on the first page of the “Corriere della sera”: “European leaders advise: economical crisis will still be protagonist in 2012”.

So I’m thinking, ok let’s put this in perspective. This is not 1929 for sure!

The real definition of the actual “economical crisis” of our times is very simple: “the death of the middle class”.

We can find how slowly we have been going into the direction of the “elimination” of the middle class over the last few years (we can easily say that it all started with the introduction of the Euro currency in Europe and with the war in Iraq in the US).

In the last few years we have had the collapse of the house markets, which was actually the collapse of the house markets for the middle class people (the poor people couldn’t afford to buy a house before and the rich people can and always will be able to afford to buy a luxury home: # 1 Hyde Park, Knightsbridge in London luxury apartments were sold long before the end of the works in fact).

We have also seen how the food market changed: you can buy an apple full of pesticides for only 15-20 cents and an organic one for about $1.00 or more.

And the clothes: we are truly going into the direction of either super cheap clothes from H&M, Forever 21, Gap… or absolutely expensive clothes from designers.

What you may still find in the middle between cheap and luxury is actually over priced cheap clothes (which sometimes even have a brand name).

In the US the sudden bankruptcy of Filene’s Basement and now Sears closing almost 100 shops in the US should open our eyes. Those were among the stores where the middle class was mainly shopping! Here people were looking for some quality, without having to spend a fortune.

And the quality items? Did you know that in Venice now you can buy a real Murano glass plate for about $100 or a similar one made in China for only $10 (inside most of the shops you will see that on one side of the store it says "made in PRC" a fancy name for "made in China" and on the other side of the same store it says "made in Italy). The funny thing is that when the cheap fake Murano glasses made in China were not sold in Venice, the real price of the plate than now costs you $100 was about $20.

Where are we going? Are we really going back to “aristocracy” and the “poor working class”?