This has the perverse result that if the country gets richer, the poverty rate can still rise, as long as incomes at the top and in the middle rise faster than those at the bottom.
The fact is, while a lot of work remains, especially to rebuild a strong middle class and offer working folks new pathways to rise into the middle class, our economy is better positioned for tomorrow than most of those other countries hit by the financial crisis.
WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Nominates Jack Lew for Secretary of the Treasury | The White House
While selling to 106 different countries, the biggest market remained North America, but with Africa in a strongly-growing second place, and sales of expertise to the Middle East on the rise as well.
Cheating rates rise through middle school and by high school, 51% of students admit to cheating on a test in the past year, and 74% say they have copied another student's homework, according to a 2012 survey of 23, 000 high-school students by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, in Los Angeles, a nonprofit character-education organization.
For example, the rise of coffee in the Islamic world in the early Middle Ages is what led to the rise of coffeehouse culture in those countries, which fueled the intellectual ferment that led to the Islamic golden age.
In China, the rise of the middle class is shifting the economy more towards consumption.
As these women rise into the middle class, the men stay in the lower class, becoming less compatible.
Gas prices and interest rates, which had been microscopic for years, started to rise around the middle of 2005.
While in developed countries the aging population and an increasing rate of chronic diseases among the older population will continue to drive demand for nutrition products, the rise of the middle class is likely to boost sales in emerging markets.
Although there was no single cause for this European Spring, a variety of radical changes in society, from technology to food shortages to the beginnings of the rise of a middle class, seemed to coalesce into widespread revolt and dissatisfaction with ruling governments.
FORBES: The Arab Spring -- Energy And The Road To Democracy?
It would inflame the Middle East and make tensions rise everywhere, including the two places where the U.S. has a huge stake and tens of thousands of troops -- Afghanistan and Iraq -- and it would put the moderate Arabs on the defense.
Similarly, the Arab Spring seems to have been triggered by another series of radical changes in society, from technology and iPhones to food shortages to the beginnings of the rise of a middle class in these societies, that have coalesced into widespread revolt and dissatisfaction with ruling governments.
FORBES: The Arab Spring -- Energy And The Road To Democracy?
They knew enough to understand how hard they could push without breaking things (the rate of return they demanded would soon ossify into a ritualized expectation of stable growth rates, a big enabler of the rise of a middle class that could basically withdraw from the risk frontier).
But I want to stress, the ultimate goal for economic policy is not hitting a specific metric, but whether the culmination of your policies lead to a stronger, more secure, and more inclusive middle class where everyone can rise, and where even children born into the poorest circumstances have a chance to reach their potential and where dignified work and retirement is promoted.
What we have not seen is any specificity from the Republicans or any indication from the leadership that they're going to accept the basic principle that wealthier Americans are going to pay higher rates, rates that were in place under the Clinton administration when this economy grew rapidly, the middle class saw its incomes rise and the wealthy did very well, to boot.
For several oil producers, notably in the Middle East and Africa, a rise in the oil price could help.
And these values gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known.
The rise of the British middle classes, with their middle-sized houses and middle-sized gardens, led to a new emphasis on floral display rather than landscape in late-Victorian England.
As businesses proliferate and incomes begin to rise, an emerging middle class will develop the civil customs and institutions that make a country less likely to fall into the grip of kleptomaniacal thugs.
Several things had helped, among them Elizabeth David's explorations of French and Italian cooking, cheap holidays abroad and the rise of a new middle class which had more money, and less sangfroid, than before.
But some economists argue that Brazil is the beneficiary of a structural shift, in which the industrialisation of Asia and the rise of a new middle class in the developing world will keep commodity prices high.
Perhaps his biggest policy success has been South Africa's rapid economic growth since the end of apartheid and the rise of a black middle class - but to the anger of many, wealth is more unevenly distributed than ever before.
Then there is the middle step, the green hills that rise from 1, 000m to 4, 000m.
BBC: Long-distance swimming in Nepal��s glacial mountain lakes
In the Middle East, unemployment is on the rise again after a decline in the 2000s.
The rise of universities in the Middle Ages also stimulated several technical innovations.
Why indeed have they dealt with autocrats and kings across the Middle East only to see the people rise up?
That pretty well sums up the Cash Strapped Consumer aspect of my Rise and Fall of the Middle Class PowerTrend.
FORBES: Uh-Oh, Even Wal-Mart Faces The Cash Strapped Consumer
Meanwhile, Iran-related tensions began to rise last week in the Middle East.
That so many Americans could rise from slums into the middle class shows, moreover, that Riis' Lower East Side was filled with such virtues.
Much as conservatives may want to blame Obama for the rise of Islamism in the Middle East, they would do well to look inward.
FORBES: Documentary Review: Dinesh D'Souza Unsuccessfully Reaches With 2016
应用推荐