Why we should worry about the middle class

If you are worried about the Western middle class — and we all should be — you may have started to have some doubts about the virtues of flexible labour markets.

In theory, these markets should make our economies more productive, and all of us richer, by making it easier for people to do the work the economy needs and to stop doing work it doesn’t.

In practice, though, some economists who once championed flexible labour markets without reservation, like Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have begun to have second thoughts.