Can the planet sustain several middle classes?
Can you imagine a world in which 2 billion people in emerging markets consume like the average American? Total middle-class consumption in the world will grow by about 55 percent between 2020 and 2030. For example, as people see their incomes rise, they eat more protein, and they quickly develop a preference for beef over pork or chicken. Well, it takes an average of 1,800 gallons of freshwater to produce one pound of beef. Then think about the raw materials needed to manufacture a car or a washing machine, and the gas or electricity required to keep it running. We will need to come up with creative ways of avoiding conflict over scarce natural resources, including water, minerals, and energy. We will need workers, engineers, and entrepreneurs who design and deliver better systems for managing the limited resources available to us. And we might need to change our wasteful habits.
Millennials struggle to become middle class
The middle class is shrinking in Europe and the United States because people are losing well-paying jobs to global competition or automation and because the young cannot gain access to stable jobs in the first place; there are just fewer of those jobs to go around. “It has become more difficult for younger generations to make it to the middle class,” concluded a 2018 study by OECD using data for several European countries as well as Mexico and the United States. And what’s really alarming is that having children makes it harder for families to reach middle-class status. Another intriguing trend is that people over sixty now account for a greater share of the middle class in the United States and Europe than has historically been the case because many have well-paying jobs, are finished raising children, and have managed to save some money. “The make-up of the middle-income class has undergone profound change,” the OECD study concludes. “It has aged faster than the population as a whole over the past three decades. Chances to make it to middle incomes fell for each subsequent generation since the baby boom generation.”
2030 by Mauro.F.Guillen: 88–90
