Polonaise for the Middle Class

You cry over torments of the middle class

Don’t know they get richer in their mass

You don’t see the picture’s longitude

Your scorn and presumption are so crude.

Buried in facebooks they catch the news

Watch photos of uncles on a cruise

With their phones getting slimmer year by year

Their wallets are swelling with every share.

Casting them as mindless dupes

Adds no flavour to their soups

Putting them into that bin

Is an insult worse than sin.

You see them as living from hand to mouth

But your thick-headed doctrines all went south

No trickling would get them to that height

Just wait till you see them put up a fight.

One time seen as devil’s brood

Now are chained to servitude

Flung into fake misery

They can’t enjoy their victory.

Wretched, slouching, mournful, gloomy

Broken, trampled, taken down.

𝐐: 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞-𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠?

A: Because it has fallen victim to the slander that its income has not increased for several decades. Meanwhile, just in 1998-2008 (after the financial crisis it got even better) middle-class incomes increased by 40-60% and there is no exaggeration in saying that the middle class is conquering the world. This is very nicely illustrated by the Branko Milanovic’s elephant curve, which shows that only a very small percentage of the world’s population has not grown significantly wealthier and the rest has got much, much richer (see https://www.pinkerettes.pl/the-elephant-curve). Americans, in particular, should be outraged by the suggestion that they have not become any richer for decades and humbly endure it - that would be very un-American. And that they are only getting what trickles down from the tables of the rich - an absurd insult and a fake! (We will get to that later).

𝐐: 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐨 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠?

A: Smartphones allow you to neatly and quickly bust two other myths proclaimed by the left: that humanity is disposing of more and more rubbish and that the GDP overstates the growth of quality of life. Firstly, smartphones contain tens, if not hundreds, of devices that we no longer have to produce and therefore throw away when they are used up. Secondly, because these devices are no longer manufactured, they are also not included in the GDP, and yet the possibility to use of these hundreds of applications undoubtedly increases our quality of life. Of course, both issues concern not only smartphones - today we consume information and culture largely without waste and for free (and also on ever better and faster equipment with ever greater resolution).