middle classes

Not so long ago, it was seen as a land of opportunity for western carmakers, where the rapidly expanding middle classes seemed to have an inexhaustible appetite for upmarket foreign-badged vehicles.

From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026

Pineapples—which were once so rare and expensive that they became the 17th century’s equivalent of the Birkin—fell out of fashion as soon as rising supply meant the middle classes could afford them too.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026

Now, similar debates are spreading across the developing world, as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies rush to capitalize on growing demand for AI in places with newly emerging middle classes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026

That’s because if high-income shoppers scale back their spending, then the other horizontal lines of the “E” — the lower and middle classes — may not have enough spending power to keep the economy afloat.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 3, 2026

They were also encouraged not to settle for old-fashioned and “bourgeois” gender roles—“bourgeois” being a catchall term for the upper middle classes of Imperial Russia who’d aspired to wealth and luxury.

From "A Thousand Sisters" by Elizabeth Wein