both groups are victims of exploitation (west and the third world) by the worlds richest 1%.
I just demonstrated that the middle class in Western countries are the world's richest 1%. How can they exploit themselves?
no they aren't. imperialism takes away jobs from the working class as it sets up an opportunity for cheap labour overseas, it has a negative impact. imperialism largely benefits the oligarchs.
Yes, global capitalism has crippled the working class in developed countries. I'm not talking about the working class though, the middle class isn't the same thing. Middle-class Americans work in offices, not factories, they don't want or need those jobs. The US functionally barely even has a working class anymore, the people who make it up are scattered and alienated and have little to no working class organizations dedicated to fighting for their interests. Obviously this is more beneficial to oligarchs but it is also not really something that petit-bourgeoisie have an interest in halting, since they benefit from it as well in the form of cheap commodities. And it's not just about commodity production either, as you bring up in the form of outsourcing, it also has to do with resource extraction, which is much less flexible than capital and labor markets.
i have a slightly different definition in mind when i was thinking of the middle class. it's been so eroded nowadays, there's little difference between the working class and the middle class outside of wage and standard of living.
I have no idea what this means. How has the middle class been "eroded?" What do the working class and middle class have in common? You realize the "middle-class" are the people who fund and vote for the GOP and DNC, don't you? Do you think the petit-bourgeois middle class has the same interest in, for example, reforming the slave labor prison system?