Rose-Colored Glasses

Here's one that isn't quite new but it ought to be welcomed by anybody who loves an inconvenient fact: Steve Rose's counterintuitive case that things are actually pretty good right now, together with a reviewer's complications on Rose's complications.      I suspect the takeaway--if there is a takeaway--is that the world is a more complicated place than we suspected.  We knew that that the blessed billionth are living better and better, and we know (or thought we know) that the middle class is being hollowed out and thrown away. The thrust of Rose's evidence suggests that part of the middle class is actually doing okay, and that the real perplexities, if such they be,fall only on a limited segment.