We're no longer 'middle class'

Walt Disney is marketing two distinct Poohs, according to the Financial Review. The original line-drawn figure, carved on fine china and pricey kids' stationery, is sold in up-market stores; the plump cartoon-like Pooh in a red T-shirt and "goofy" smile is found on plastic key tags and cheap toys sold in supermarkets.

Apparently these are indications of a major overhaul in marketing strategies, away from the mass consumer market towards a strategy based on "certain brands" being "the brands of certain classes". The reason, according to the Financial Review, is that "the middle class is no longer growing. Instead it's the top and bottom ends that are swelling."

This decline of the middle classes has advertising firms alarmed at the erosion of their traditional mass market. The restaurant business in the US is bemoaning the fact that "the $4 meal is doing all right and the $50 meal is doing all right. The $20 meal is in trouble."

Underlying all this is a significant decline in the living standards of working people, experienced in all industrialised countries through the '80s and '90s. In the US the wealthiest fifth of the population's income has grown by 21% while the wages of the majority, the bottom 60%, decline or stagnate. Austerity policies— wage "restraint", cutbacks in the social wage, job losses through restructuring — have resulted in the rich getting richer and the rest getting poorer.

Green Left Weekly since its inception six years ago has relentlessly campaigned in defence of the living standards of working people and the poor and against the austerity drive of governments and their big business backers.

This struggle hasn't lost any of its urgency today; in the current climate it's even more important to build the fight back against the attacks of the Howard government. We urge you to join with us in campaigning to build a fight back against big business's austerity drive. Buy a subscription for yourself or a friend and join Green Left' s fight back network. Call our free call hot line on 1800 634 206 now. Green Left Weekly — the paper that's fighting back.

From GLW issue 268