Re: Postrel on liberalization

[Alan Cibils <abcibils@xxxxxxxxx>]

At  8/25/2002, Alan G Isaac wrote:
> How wrong this is!  The history of the human race has almost
> everyone living in poverty and dying young throughout the
> ages.  What is historically extraordinary is two things: the
> explosion in the human population over the last few hundred
> years, and the even more recent emergence in capitalist
> economies of a true middle class with a material standard of
> living that has no historical parallel.

You should probably qualify the statement about the emergence of a middle
class, restricting it primarily to the US, Europe, and a few other areas
(such as Japan). For much of Africa, Latin America, and Asia  the middle
class has yet to emerge or, as is the case with Argentina and  other
countries under the influence of the IMF/WB,  is rapidly disapearing.

Alan