Unfortunately you can’t have open borders with statist, nationalistic economic policies.

The one point that is not addressed here but is made often by Mises and the writers and lecturers at the Institute is that man is not purely economic. Many people, seemingly more and more, do what they need to do in school and in their jobs in order to get by. They may value leisure time, socializing, there favorite sports team, family time, night life, et al over further financial gain. Perhaps those decisions have short term benefits and long term consequences. In my experience people that live this way are often happy. The government sees it as their mission to reallocate financial resources from high economic achievers, often made successful by years of disciplined study or toil, to those that may have valued other priorities. I am not saying that opportunities are always equal and their are not strivers that fail but in many instances people live their values and benefit in different ways. You can’t reallocate the sexual pleasures of someone that spent their lives chasing beautiful people or the good times had by those staying out late. You can’t reallocate the joy a musician feels by mastering an instrument or the joy an artist feels by honing is talent. You an easily reallocate the money saved by the workaholic, business owner, innovator. But it is illiberal and unfair to do so.

This explains why political regimes were much more favorable to the market economy in the 19th century than in the 20th, when power was transferred to the middle class.

Then why didn’t all the small artisans start employing labor? What made the would-be “large capitalists” more capable of accomplishing this?

A lot of them did. The small artisans that did start employing labor and engaging in mass production are the ones that became large capitalists.

The ones that didn’t went off and did something else that was more useful for the economy surrounding them.

Then why didn’t all the small artisans start employing labor? What made the would-be “large capitalists” more capable of accomplishing this?

You can certainly define the “middle class” as the last line of your post, but this fails to explain why there is any distinction at all, and does not establish that it is any harder to move out of this class than it is to move around within it (socioeconomically, that is). Thus any social theory that uses this class division as a basis will produce flawed results. The classes of society exist in our heads, not in actual society.

That’s what I think of when I think of the “myth” of the middle class. A middle class is whatever you want to define it as enclosing, but this categorization makes no impact on society. It cannot be a caste. The artisans are “pushed out of the market” only if they continue to refuse to employ labor.

The middle class is therefore defined as the class of people with assets to protect, but with no familiarity with the workings of the market economy.

Its why, in general, you have more theater, more clubs and resturants, more shopping opportunity, and more production in large cities than small towns. More people to do jobs, and more people to support businesses.

Of corse more people does bring other problems, and some people would rather live away from all that, hence you have people living in small towns or even on houses miles from everyone else. And, at least in the US we have pleanty of space(all 6 billion people on earth could fit with releative comfort in the state of Texas alone).

And no, population density isnt the only thing determining a countries productivity, but it helps.

The elite up the ante by increasing demand for housing in lower population density (i.e., low-crime) areas. How ‘diverse’ do you think the Kennedy compound gets once the help has finished washing the dishes?

What are you talking about? There are very clear boundaries for economic classes.

I know this. I’ve done work with surveys, and there is this neat survey where they ask what kind and how many TV sets you own, what car you drive, what your income is, etc., and based on that, one can determine what “class” you belong to.

This tool is very commonly used in marketing and product development. It helps entrepreneurs decide what the market is for their products.

Funny thing is, there are studies that show people who own the same things, have the same income and the same family structure, often have the same interests and the same attitude towards life.

According to governmentspeak, the lower boundary is the income just above the poverty level for a family of four, and the upper boundary would be an income of $249,999.99. Any thing in between is considered “middle class” I guess.

However the existance of the welfare state complicates this somewhat: As long as its possible to come over and mooch off of the productive members of this country, there will always be some immigrants who will do so. I think we need to deal with the welfare problem before we can seriously handle the immigration problem.