Right now, for example, Americans have tons of cheap plastic and electronic crap at their disposal, but very few can swim in any local water (beach, lake, river) w/o fear of contaminants or pollutants.  They have tons of cheap lousy food readily available, much of which contributes to various national-scale health problems which in turn burden the medical system and inflict tragedy on families;  is this a "high standard of living" or a "low standard of living"?  They spend more per capita than any other nation on health care, yet get less for it than other nations.  They have more cars per capita than any other nation, and spend millions of hours (collectively) stuck in traffic and billions of dollars annually subsidising this "private" automobile system (remember the true cost of a gallon of gasoline as mentioned in the Chi Trib feature article?)...

Which is a higher standard of living -- wasting N hours per year stuck in traffic jams in a luxury SUV, or wasting far fewer hours, possibly reading or surfing the web en route, and spending far less of one's annual income on transit, by riding light rail, bus, or heavy rail to work every day?  If the object is to display expensive consumer goods and conspicuous consumption of resources then the SUV solution is the higher standard of living.  If the object is to conserve resources and have more leisure time, then Plan B looks better.

Another note:  the standard of living for Chinese peasants has not held steady while the coastal urban elites have advanced, i.e. a net gain for China as a nation.  The livelihoods of peasants and their living conditions have deteriorated sharply since the land reforms of the 70s, as Peter Kwong's recent reporting from China documents.  Peasants are seeing their communal resources of land and water contaminated by reckless, unchecked industrial colonisation (i.e. using the countryside as a "sacrifice zone" for filthy industries whose profits are funnelled off to the urban cores);  and the neoliberal agenda, Chinese style, as adopted by the current government has revived a level of corruption and nepotism in rural government and administration not seen since the days of the mandarins.  Land reform is being rolled back in some area, foreclosures and confiscations are taking place;  dirty deals and mailfist tactics are being used to displace farmers in favour of carburbs and factories. And then there's desertification which is eating away at Chinese arable land at an alarming rate.  Most of the tens of thousands of public demonstrations taking place in China each year are rural and led by angry peasants.  They're no fools, they know when they're being cheated.

As with the industrialisation of England, China's new "leap forward" enriching the new middle class is being made directly at the expense of the rural peasantry.  They are being herded by Enclosure and by environmental vandalism off the land and into the cities as a refugee class, a pool of wage-slave labour.  The notion that somehow the middle classes are leaping ahead while the peasants are merely waiting their turn -- i.e. one segment moves ahead first, then another, like a centipede walks -- is imho nonsense;  it seems blazingly obvious that the urban elites are replicating the classic core/periphery dynamic and making their "upward mobility" yardage by stepping firmly on the faces of their rural co-citizens and shoving them down into greater and greater misery and poverty.  Which is how "globalisation" is working generally;  to the detriment of the poor and peasants, indigenes and farmers, and to the benefit only of a relatively small percentage of the population in each "advancing" country -- including the US, where the resource and income gap between classes has reached proportions not seen since the "roaring 20's".

A rising tide can only "lift all boats" if there is an ever increasing supply of water.  Otherwise, high tide here means low tide over there.  In a zero sum game, someone has to lose for someone else to win spectactularly.  The history of industrial capitalism is based on one set of people losing spectacularly -- indigenes, the S Hemi, peasants -- and another much smaller set of people winning spectacularly -- Anglo/Euros, N Hemi, landowners, rentiers, technocrats.  Sometimes I wish the pro-growthers would just suffer an  honesty attack and admit what they stand for and what they're doing -- imprison or starve all the peasants and steal their land, forests, water, minerals, oil, fish, and "view lots".  But of course, like all imperialists before 'em, they prefer to pretend they're just doing it for the public good :-)  The mission civilisatrice has become the mission economique -- instead of bringing the gospel of Jesus while robbing the natives blind, we'll bring them the Gospel of the Chicago School while robbing them blind.  Plus que ca change.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...