Instead, another group has benefited from this new economic system. Despite their small numbers in the workforce, they had a high social status and important symbolic power in society: they are the "new middle classes", a term which refers to people working in finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sectors or various creative or service jobs. They are people with a decent lifestyle characterised by the consumption of urban spaces full of nice neighbourhoods with cafes, boutiques, small restaurants, art centres, luxurious retail, residential and business complexes. They seem to accept any kind of social deviation which indicates their fetishism of difference, parallel with the political atmosphere created since the 1980s. At the same time, another group has emerged, corresponding to spending sprees, luxury brands, and seven-star hotels: the "new rich" who spend huge amounts of money in cities like London, New York, Istanbul, and Dubai, places becoming more similar to each other and characterised by a built environment created by world-known architects, and luxurious hotels containing toilets made of gold. They earn money out of thin air and can be regarded as 'rentiers', people who derive income primarily from speculation. By the impact of this culture, lots of people have become fascinated by the power of money and the lifestyles of celebrities.
In addition, the number of conventional working classes who earn a living through their labour has also declined due to the impact of outsourcing production to developing countries, a process developed by "globalisation". In this process, the productive working classes have lost their class consciousness made by labour and pain. They became stigmatised in everyday discourses through the terms such as "underclass" or "benefit-scroungers" and associated with a lifestyle characterised by consumption, celebrities, and football and tabloid newspapers, long-term unemployment, low level of education, and an attitude towards life which can be summarised as "no future". Their situation is legitimised by political actors and those who are dependent on and earn by such a political context, who see the working classes as an ornament in their everyday lives, like flowers in a pot which "beautify" cities.
Another reason of the decline of class-based politics is the segregation of working classes across ethnic and religious lines as the result of migration from rural to urban areas (within national contexts) and from developing to developed countries (in an international context). Developed countries and large cities in developing countries have received migrants who do not know how to claim their rights and can never be a threat to the existing system. Rather, they might lead to the emergence of right-wing ideologies among local people, who might regard migrants as problems in their societies. This is beneficial to big businesses, as migrants have become a source of cheap labour without being protected by welfare mechanisms, which allows businesses to easily generate profit from them. The migrant workers, due to their ideological background or lack thereof, cannot generate political opposition based on class. In addition, in case of any problem, they become scapegoats and are sent back to where they came from. As a result, there cannot be established working-class solidarity between migrant workers and local people, which explains the reasons for this differentiated and segregated society and who benefits from it. In the end, we have a politically-correct intellectual atmosphere exempted from any antagonism and a society characterised by consumption and speculation. Highly diversified social structure also leads to endless problems which cannot be solved, where people cannot form a consensus and create an alternative to the status quo, despite of emergence of many social movements.