Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.
If you step back and look at technology from every era, it has displaced jobs but also created a lot of jobs.
Right now, America's middle class is struggling to meet their basic needs.
The real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.
The key to a vibrant middle class is an abundance of jobs that pay enough so that workers can provide for themselves and their families, enjoy leisure time, save for retirement and pay for their children's education so they can grow up and earn even more than their parents.
Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy.
Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses - it's progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.
Our focus going forward is on sectors where the life of China's middle class can be upgraded: health, travel, leisure, education, and the Internet. We call it marrying China's growth with global resources.
The middle class has disappeared. We have a highway to poverty and no roads coming out.