Not such a bad trade?

From Chrystia Freeland's article, "TheRise of the New Global Elite," in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly:

 "The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world's largest hedge funds told me that his firm's investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today's economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleauges had argued that the hollowing out of the American middle class didn't really matter. 'His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade,' the CEO recalled."

The larger point is that the US, as well as the entire world, is trending toward only two classes - the economically fragile and the super-wealthy. That doesn't sound stable or good to me - but on the other hand, I have a hard time arguing philosophically that the statement above by the "senior colleague" is wrong in some way. I don't work ten times harder than a Chinese farmer or factory worker; I'm fairly sure that I work about twenty times less hard. Why should have so much more than that hard-working foreigner?

But I don't want to have less. Dropping out of the middle class is hard; I feel as though I spent a long time clawing my way into it, and now I'm slipping back out of it. If I'm going to have less, at least I'd like to choose to do so on my own.