Inheritance tax, which used to be levied only on the wealthy, now hits many middle-class estates.
This research is based on a case study of Buru Buru estate, the biggest middle class residential estate in Nairobi, Kenya.
My It's the Economy column for the next issue of The New York Times Magazine looks at one venue through which the financial crisis helped the rich get richer and simultaneously wounded the middle class: real estate.
That would mean extending the Bush cuts, reducing income-tax rates by an additional 20 percent, and ending capital gains taxes for the middle class, the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax and the various taxes in health care reform, including the Medicare tax increase on high incomes.
Soweto is now one of the most popular destinations in all of South Africa, boasting a population of four million people living in a diverse landscape of Mandela estates, middle class neighborhoods, local shops and stadiums.
As the once thriving middle class disappeared, adjacent real estate listings in the Port Clinton News Herald advertised near-million-dollar mansions and dilapidated double-wides.
(In the state's employment hierarchy, the lower-middle-class job for those without a college education was bank teller. For men who didn't finish high school, it was construction. The middle class worked as real-estate agents and brokers. The upper class were developers).
All of which serves to price large segments of the middle class out of some real estate markets.
We would now save $200 billion a year in interest costs, which would go toward lowering taxes for everybody and particularly the working middle class; getting rid of the estate tax and saving Social Security.
Chili's follows a path already trodden by U.S. brands such as Starbucks (SBUX.O), Burger King, Cinnabon and mostly recent PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N), as it seeks to cash in on revived consumer appetite in post-recession Russia, where the middle class is booming and real estate prices remain low.
There is a vogue for "Muslim only" middle-class housing estates.
