The most challenging economic issue ahead of us involves a group that will barely be represented at this week’s annual Davos summit — the middle classes of the world’s industrial countries.
Nothing is more important to the success of industrial democracies than sustained increases in wages and living standards for working families, as the Inclusive Prosperity Commission, which Ed Balls and I co-chaired, concludes in a report .
Amid the focus on global finance, on geopolitics and on the moral imperative of helping the world’s poor, no one should lose sight of the fact that without substantial changes in policy the prospects for the middle class globally are at best highly problematic.