Why "Populism" Is Here To Stay

Aristotle was the first to point out how a thriving middle class is a condition sine qua non for a functioning democracy: “A constitution based on the middle class is the mean between the extremes of the rule by the rich and the rule by the poor.”

When we speak of the middle class we therefore mean the median group of society, the one representing the largest group of people by income.

To clarify with a simple example, in a population of 2000 people, if 500 earn 1000€ a month, 1400 people earn 2000€ a month and 100 earn 10000€ a month, then the 1400 people are the ”middle class”.

A prosperous, educated middle class is the best bulwark against extremes. Ganesh Sitaraman of Vanderbilt University argues:

“From the time of the ancients, statesmen and philosophers were deeply worried about the problem of economic inequality. They worried that either the rich would oppress the poor or the poor would seek to confiscate the wealth of the rich, and the result would be violence, instability, even revolution.”

Sitaraman worked for US Senator (Dem) Elizabeth Warren from 2011 to 2013. If Democrats had bothered listening to him and looking at what is actually happening, maybe Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have needed to write her own book “What Happened”, trying to explain her electoral debacle.

The Western class is necessary for political centrism

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