In the neighbourhoods of my childhood, policemen, teachers and civil servants lived alongside medical specialists and lawyers. These families lived in modest homes and made ends meet, despite most of them being single-income households with stay-at-home mothers. Shortly after we started working, my husband and I could afford a cottage close to our offices in the City Centre.
My experience is not unique. In South Africa, white middle-class Afrikaans families were exceptionally protected and privileged in the seventies and eighties. However, similar stories were true for American and British middle-class families at the time.
In stark contrast, most single-income middle-class families now struggle to make ends meet. Salaries in the service and care professions have lagged. Young people cannot afford property until much later. Many have been pushed out of areas close to work, and some choose not to have children for financial reasons.
The middle class is worse off, and young people are worse off than their parents. Meanwhile, ultra wealthy asset owners have benefited from wage stagnation, tax reductions (especially in the USA) and decades of exceptional asset price growth. The result is a gap between rich and poor wider than at any point in modern history.
The story of the vanishing middle class explains many of today’s socio-political undercurrents. As in many moments in history, politicians are using the middle class’s hardship to capture the electorate’s imagination. A familiar tactic is to blame even poorer, more marginalised groups - often immigrants - for the economic challenges facing the average voter.
Whilst no one argues for unbridled immigration, it is not the root cause of our socio-economic challenges.
In a recent podcast with Steven Bartlett, Brené Brown remarked: “The leading political narrative … that seems to be getting people elected is if you say those people with that skin colour are the reason for the pain and anguish in your life. It’s actually the people below you… crossing the English Channel on dinghies that are ruining your life.” The same dangerous narrative exists in South Africa - directed not only along racial lines, but at immigrants from north of our borders.
The narrative is grounded in scarcity thinking: the belief that resources are limited and must be guarded, that others must be kept out to protect what is ours. History is full of examples where power - and even military might - has been used to defend this laager mentality: hoard and protect.
But scarcity thinking blocks generative, creative solutions. Instead of asking how to grow the pie, people focus on defending the status quo.
What we need is imaginative leadership. Leadership that gathers people around the possibility of growth and shared prosperity, rather than the instinct to retreat into fear. Leadership at every level: workplaces, communities, nations and the global stage.
And this leadership is also personal. Scarcity thinking can root in each of us. It makes us defensive, fearful and stuck. Rejecting scarcity thinking is crucial to avoid handing our power to those who exploit our fear and divide us further.
If we want a different world, a more equal world for our children, we must begin by renouncing scarcity thinking at every level.