There is no so-called spindle structure. The so-called spindle society is nothing more than outsourcing the low-income jobs at the bottom to foreigners. From the perspective of the global income structure, it is definitely a pyramid structure. The spindle structure of some countries is that the country as a whole has obtained the high-profit/high-income part in the social division of labor, and the slowdown in population growth is conducive to a more even distribution of income.

Similarly, you can also regard Shanghai as a spindle-shaped society, because the middle-class income in Shanghai is not low. However, Shanghai's spindle-shaped income structure is based on the low income of other regions and rural areas.

So if we pursue the goal of improving people's livelihood (more people with higher incomes), then you need to pursue two things:

1/ Countries climb to higher-profit links in the international division of labor

2/ More reasonable allocation

From the perspective of higher profit links, let’s take the net profit margin as an example:

- The currency with the highest profit margin, almost 99.9% profit (such as US dollars)

- High-tech: Nvidia’s chip net profit margin is 55%, Microsoft’s net profit margin is 37%

- Brand: Nike’s net profit margin is 10%, Hermes’ is 30%

- Petroleum, minerals and other resources

...

It can be seen that, apart from the mining industry, which is a gift from God, the two key points to earn high profits are R&D and consensus building. Of course, this is never achieved overnight. If you are a country bumpkin in rural Laos, no one will pay attention to you if you try to build a brand. High-profit industries need to be supported by medium-profit industries such as manufacturing. Therefore, China is currently in a critical period of transformation from medium profits to high profits. The current R&D investment should be considerable, but consensus building is still far from enough.

In contrast, manufacturing itself has low profits (China is currently at this stage), and agricultural profits are not high either/unless large-scale production and technology are used;

Let’s talk about the distribution issue.

There should be two perspectives on distribution. One is the number of people. The more laborers you have, the harder it is for them to get a larger share of the pie. Capitalism did not start with a warm and loving attitude. African slaves, enclosure movement, and American plantations were all bloody. But later, the growth of the labor force could not keep up with the growth of the economy, and capital had to give the labor force more power and more compensation. On the other hand, the development of AI and robots in the future will inevitably make the treatment of "people" worse and worse - this is almost inevitable.

The second angle is circulation. Different economies have different numbers of cycles. For example, if an economy flows to the middle class or the poor, then 1 yuan can be circulated many times. A joke is that you give 10 yuan to a female anchor on Douyin, and then she takes your Didi taxi at night and returns the 10 yuan to you. From this perspective, the number of cycles of services is greater than that of goods, because services themselves involve more people, while the funds for buying goods go into factories.

To summarize:

1/ There is no spindle society, only different stages of division of labor

2/ R&D and consensus building are ways to earn high profits, and China is currently climbing this ladder

3/ Population reduction is good for income distribution, while the service economy is good for circulation, both of which are good for more equal income distribution

4/The future is not optimistic. AI may bring humans back to the class society of the past.