So what of this picture? If I were on the Enterprise and Captain Kirk took a look down at his earth and was asked to pick the "average Joe" from the population...someone who stood right on the mid-line of the bell curve...what or who would he find?
Statistically it would be a rural Chinese making about $3000 a year and there are more than a few million of them. It would not be an American or a European nor someone from a lost tribe in the Philippines. Statistically we are in Western China somewhere and this is the guy. He isn't ignorant. Perhaps just not educated. He isn't poor by his contemporary standards and perhaps he doesn't "want" in the conventional sense except in times of poor harvest. So what's the point?
You should read Mr. Krugman's article (click here). Then think that we have policy makers making huge decisions that effect the very fabric of society - economics and values. They make them on a basis that is so far removed from the "average Joe" just trying to get by. We argue about the trade imbalance between China and the US and the Rinimbi v. the Dollar. Our average Joe's life isn't much effected by the currency "crisis" (opposed to the US's Joe who is creamed by it).
The point is that the debates swirl at a level that is light years from the persons directly effected by the outcome. The gap or disconnect is huge. All the average Joe knows is that his life is the same as it was years or decades back yet it is somehow harder and he is less and less connected to those making decisions - the the decision makers are, unfortunately just another set of ignorance and want.