Globalization and Changes of Middle Class

Globalization and changes of middle class essay

Topic: Are middle class Victims or Winners of globalization

The term ‘middle class,’ it is a vague word as the concept and the meaning of it has been changed over time. For example, in medieval era Europe, the classification of social classes was based on the descent such as nobles and peasants. The nobles in England were classified as high class even though they were lack of wealth. However, the peasants were not able to become high class no matter how wealthy they were, so the classification of peasants with wealth was classified as middle class. As the time flew and when the capitalism has taken place instead of hierarchy, the classification of middle class has changed once more which is mainly classified by the person’s occupation and the wealth the person has. For example of United Kingdom in 1911, the middle class was the class that falls between the upper class and the working class which are professionals, managers, and senior civil servants. However, nowadays, as the economy and technology has developed in fast pace, the definition of the middle class have changed once again that is determined according to the income level of a person. According to The Economics in February 2009, the definition of the middle classes is the people who have a reasonable income with stable job occupation. The Economics also pointed out that the number of middle classes has exploded from 1980s to 2000s. What can be the reason of such a huge change of the number of middle classes from 1920s to present days?

The changes are due to the fact of globalization. The standard definition of globalization is a trend of countries joining together economically. As the transportation and the way of communication developed, such as horses to airplanes and letters to internet, the transaction frequency between different countries has increased drastically. For example, when a person living in Hong Kong tries to go to North America, it...