The Middle Class’s Slow Ascent and Swift Decline

During the mid-14th Century, the Black Plague ravaged Europe, killing up to half the population by some estimates. Urban centers were hardest hit, but the plague didn’t discriminate -- rich and poor, nobles and peasants all suffered.

Calamities of that magnitude inevitably lead to big changes. But, like the trade routes opened by Genghis Khan, the long-term societal consequences of the Black Death were not all necessarily bad.

Because the continent held fewer people after the plague’s devastation, labor was in short supply. A limited labor supply meant that workers had greater bargaining power and could command higher wages. Frustrated rulers enacted laws capping worker pay, but those laws were widely ignored. Local landowners needed work done and were willing to pay more to entice laborers away from other employers.

With higher wages enabling savings, frugal European peasants gradually turned into a budding middle class. Long-sighted parents invested in educating their children, which enhanced the next generation’s earning potential. Land ownership, previously limited to the Church and nobility, became an achievable goal for common people.

An economically empowered middle class could assert itself politically, employing financial strength as negotiating leverage. Over time, non-nobles secured recognized rights and, eventually, a say in government. Autocracies became constitutional monarchies that became republics.

A limited labor supply meant that workers had greater bargaining power and could command higher wages. Frustrated rulers enacted laws capping worker pay, but those laws were widely ignored. Local landowners needed work done and were willing to pay more to entice laborers away from other employers.

Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which developed during the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.

Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land. The kholops in Russia and villeins in gross in England, in contrast, could be traded like regular slaves, could be abused with no rights over their own bodies, could not leave the land they were bound to, and could marry only with their lord's permission.

The decline of serfdom in Western Europe has sometimes been attributed to the widespread plague epidemic of the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347 and caused massive fatalities, disrupting society. The decline, however, had begun before that date. Serfdom became increasingly rare in most of Western Europe after the medieval renaissance at the outset of the High Middle Ages. But, conversely, it grew stronger in Central and Eastern Europe, where it had previously been less common (this phenomenon was known as "later serfdom").

- Wikipedia

Regards,

Indeed. The wealth and power of the middle class seems slow, but it IS steady if the people are left alone. It’s based on something those at the other ends of the spectrum cannot ever understand- hard work and determination. But it takes nothing for those at the other ends of the spectrum to take that wealth and power away.

This happens if those of us in the middle class allow it.

Seems to me that if you bring into America a bunch of cheap labor who will never make enough to rise above uderclass status, you’ll end up with a small layer of wealthy and that large underclass beneath them.

The wild card is if that underclass can vote who knows what will happen?

This sort of thing is hard to figure out.

The Dims push the theme “we are a nation of immigrants’ while their largest constituency - the lower middle class - keeps getting pushed to the back of the economic bus by enough additional cheap labor to keep their wages from growing.

Meanwhile a bunch of that cheap labor is busy building houses that keep getting less affordable.

While Adam Smith laid out the outline of a free enterprise system, he was no fool about political corruption coming from the upper classes and how it can turn a free enterprise system into a crony-capitalist system.

The only difference between that system and what Admin Smith found with the economies dependent on the rights handed out by the royalty - the rulers - is that today the sheeple are electing the political cronies who hand out the policy favors to the corporate elites.

“Eventually it’ll lead to revolution and dictatorship.”

Maybe not dicttatorship because the American culture provides a free, comfortable life, and citizens will not vote to abandon that.

Revolution, yes. Revolution by blacks is accepted as legitimate now. Revolution by conservatives (e.g. Capital rough-housing) is not. Right now we’re talking mini-revolutions that could be called un-peaceful protests.

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