Corporations are also now moving to what they call the ‘hourglass’ model of marketing products, and services. Ie products for the rich and products for the poor. They are betting on the destruction of the middle class.

From the WSJ………” Procter & Gamble is adopting an “hourglass” marketing strategy, with products aimed at high- and low-end consumers, but not much in the middle. In a marked shift from P&G’s historic focus on middle-class households, “the world’s largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting,” The WSJ reports.

This is no small matter or a minor change by a second-tier firm: P&G has at least one product in 98% of U.S. households, The WSJ reports. U.S. sales totaled about $30.5 billion in its latest fiscal year, about 37% of its total, while accounting for 60% of the firm’s $11.8 billion profits.

The company is engaging in what The WSJ calls a “fundamental change” in how it markets products in the U.S. “We’re going to do this both by tiering up in terms of value as well as tiering down our portfolio down,” CEO Robert McDonald says. As noted above, P&G isn’t the only company coming to the same conclusion: Heinz is following a similar strategy to P&G while Saks is focusing its attention more on high-end consumer vs. ‘aspirational’ shoppers.

Meanwhile, Citigroup has created an index of 25 stocks designed to profit on this hourglass theme, including Estee Lauder and Saks as the top and Family Dollar Stores and its ilk at the bottom. The strategy has returned 56.5% since its inception in December 2009 vs. 11% for the Dow, another statistic reflecting the hollowing out of America’s middle class.

Wave goodbye to the 20th century, and say hello to the 19th century instead.

China? Time to abolish the minimum wage, perhaps?

Several mainstream commentators have admitted being puzzled about Britain’s labour market. Given the miserable state of the economy, it is reasonable to expect unemployment to be higher than it is.

“Here’s the statistic that Britain’s finest economic brains simply cannot explain: the number of people in work in the UK has risen by 201,000 in the three months to June, a period in which our national output is supposed to have shrunk, by 0.7%.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19270299

Bob @ 3

Having tens of thousands of people on zero hour contracts is not a suprise. The vermin are driving decent people into the ground.

And why can “the vermin” do it, Jim? Why are there more people than jobs?

Jon Cruddas, 2005 :

“… immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community – and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment. Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour.”

Billy Bragg, 2010 :

“Everyone else in London benefits from multiculturalism and cheap labour…”

Karl Marx, 1847 :

“The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it”

What we’re seeing is reproletarianisation.

They’ll have returned to the life pattern of their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Why are there more people than jobs?

A question we could have asked with equal pointedness in the 1980s.

The Republicans in the US have decided that the retirement age should be raised to 72 years. Which just happens to be the average age when the poor die.

But of course they remain pro life.

China? Time to abolish the minimum wage, perhaps?

Yeah you’re right – we should bring wages down to Chinese levels. That would instantly boost the economy and spending.

*shakes head*

Well for a start workfare is still going on, and there’s reasons to suspect that the old canard of “there’s lies, damn lies, and government statistics” remains a universal truth. It was also little surprise that the main source of outrage for workfare came from the SWP, not the Labour party too.

Bertrand Russell might have said this is a good thing. Maybe.