This slide from a Calamos webinar today on Emerging Markets highlights the major economic driver of the rising Asian middle class ex-Japan. The graphic shows the Asian middle class slice of global middle class consumption growing over the next 35 years from about 20% (10% Japan + 10% other Asia) to close to 70%, with Japan less than 5% of that.
[imageeffect type=”frame” width=”600″ height=”446″ alt=”” url=”http://thefinancialpreserve.com/credence-dev/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/EmergingMiddleClass.gif” ]
The great American economic engine of the second half of the 20th Century is largely displaced—apropos of the current socio-political discussion going on around Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Walter Russell Mead’s critique that points to the global economic transition/dislocation as the underlying driver that is disrupting the post-war social model of American life.
Best question of the seminar was when will we stop calling them ‘emerging markets’ and just start calling them ‘global growth companies?’