The Scary New Rich

This is pretty much verbatim what folks said about the rise of the United States. And, for that matter, the British before us. And, for that matter, Japan.

(Though foreign observers haven't frequently described Japanese as fiercely individualistic since, oh, the 1920s or so. Fun fact about changing perceptions of culture: Japanese people also used to be well-known as poorly educated slackers.)

No matter how appealing it may be to simplistically classify millions of people like that, the devil is in the details always. We can just begin to form some crude models with an in-depth study of the economies and sub-economies (and sub-sub) of the world (a humble attempt here: http://www.gapminder.org/ ), let alone their equally complex social and political data.

And despite the authors' beliefs, we are still evolving in all spheres - political, social and economic. Today's liberal views can yet be viewed as conservative in the future when better *cracies will form, very many of them from the so-called second and third worlds.

This article is just an erroneous generalization. The "middle class" culture and politics aren't the same in these countries.

First World: politically liberal, transparent government, rich countries with universal healthcare and mandated vacation floors. Moderate to high economic growth. Poverty is virtually nonexistent; it's not tolerant. The major flaw of these countries comes from their strength-- although completely nonmilitant, they can be a bit insular and closed to outsiders.

Second World: politically conservative, high degree of corruption, overt elitism and stark class (and often race) discrepancies. Low degree of political freedom. Lots of poverty and economically-motivated crime. Usually, high economic growth. These are countries that are sacrificing freedom and quality of life in order to increase or maintain relative status.

Third World: persistently underdeveloped and poor countries-- often too corrupt and wartorn even to get off the ground-- that, absent substantial change, have grim economic futures.

This article is about the Second World mentality. First World includes most of the EU countries and Canada. Second World includes the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries as well as the Arab oil states, most of Latin America, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, and (to a large degree) the United States post-Reagan.

In fact, I'd argue that the main political tension in the US is between a First World (Blue States) and Second World (Red States) subnation that are emerging, and diverging, within one country. The post-2001 militancy is our Second World component expressing a willingness to sacrifice prosperity, lives, and political freedom for national dominance.