A lot of attention has been focussed on the BRIC economies ever since Goldman Sachs came out with its famous BRICs report five years ago. A natural consequence of this, but one on which little was written, was the impact on incomes across the world. Goldman Sachs has now come out with a report on incomes, and that points out that we're in the middle of an unprecedented explosion in the world middle class (defined as those with an annual income of 6,000 and 30,000 PPP dollars). As a result of the BRICs explosion, and that of the N-11 (the Next-11includes countries like Turkey, Philippines and Iran), around two billion people are likely to join the global middle class by as early as 2030 "" at this point, around 30 per cent of the world's population will be middle class. The middle three quintiles, that is excluding the top and bottom quintiles, today account for around 31 per cent of global GDP in PPP terms (around 15 per cent in $ terms) and this will rise to around 57 per cent (43 per cent in $ terms) by 2050. While this has obvious implications of sharp reductions in global poverty, in the current context of rising oil prices, it also signals a permanent shift of the demand curve for cars and other energy-intensive forms of consumption.