What is the middle class?

When I was growing up the U.S. was famous for its 'vast middle class,' and it was the cultural make up that defined the '50's, and the suburban man barbecuing in his backyard, but the barbecue may have come in the '60's, but you get the idea. The poor and rich represent the political extremes of the spectrum, with the poor being characterized as having more revolutionary, or left wing ideas, while the rich represent the establishment. The middle class are usually striving to be rich, with the poor sometimes striving to be middle class, and it would seem that very few people at any given time are veering towards the revolutionary ideas of the poor, to overturn the State in its favor, unless economic times are dire. It's what the poor see the rich doing with the laws tilted in their favor, while the middle class tend to see the rich as generally holding the Country together, in which they are heavily invested, so again the middle tends to identify with the rich more than the poor. The only exception comes for those middle class people who started off as poor, which may not be happening as much in America anymore, but was the norm for awhile, and often these are the poor people that don't dream of being rich, and have guilt for having so much more than those they grew up with, and that's called 'white liberal guilt,' since the middle class is a very white idea.

Economically, the classes mix more than ever now, although the distinctions are still there. I grew up in the '70's at the end of the F.D.R. era even though he'd already been dead for 30 years, and I remember being taught that there was a lower middle class, a middle class, and an upper middle class. I guess the economists of the day made these distinctions because the middle class was so big by then that it was starting to differentiate from itself, with its own quirks and tendencies. I haven't heard anyone on TV or radio use the words 'the lower middle class,' or the 'upper middle class' since the '80's, if even then, and I guess that's because the middle class just isn't big enough anymore for three layers, and lord knows the phrase 'the vanishing middle class' is boiler plate at this point in Democratic Party politics, and Republican Party politics too, but not with the same gusto. I'd also argue that Gen X is probably the most college educated generation in history, but not economically topping their parents for the most part, so the cultural assumptions that people used to make about being a boring uncultured middle class guy aren't as rigid anymore. More often than not it implies a two income household with no housewife, and very possibly a divorce, but the middle class are the homeowners and in local elections they tend to be the ones who vote since so many ballot initiatives have to do with property tax measures. I don't own a house but I can only imagine many a liberal arts homeowner who once had revolutionary thoughts but now is settled down cringing at having to compromise his/her ideals over whether or not to pass a levy to help schools or to vote for their pocketbook.

In the '90s, the millionaire class became a new Clinton era phenomenon, and this has wreaked havoc on the culture in general. I don't have statistics, but I highly doubt that more than the 2% or 3% er's of the society are raking in over a millionaire a year, and yet the idea became popular enough in the culture that I'm pretty sure the Republicans successfully ran on it for most of my twenties and into my thirties, if you can believe that. Sure, their rank and file is made up of the working white poor, but that didn't stop them from thinking they were geniuses in business and finance who could figure out a way to make a million if they just put their brains together (think the Duck Dynasty), so they sold the poor on tax cuts for the rich, and attacks on their unions and benefits, because those policies would benefit them one day. I'm not sure even the Republicans can sell their voters on this circa 2015, but the idea of making a millionaire class has created a nouvea riche tastelessness that didn't exist en masse when I was growing up, and was labeled 'upper middle class' because wealth ran in the family. I'm still amazed at how when I grew up there was a real middle class, or working class, disdain for the rich. They thought they were pompous and just kind of weak in general, while the working man, the lower middle class man, who watched football and drank beer, thought he was the real American representing the thoughts of the Country, and in general this was the political mood of the day. I don't need to tell any Gen X'er but boy did that change come the '80s when the idea of wealth was glamorized and approved of in a way that would've made the Roosevelts sick to their stomach, even though they came from money. Richie Rich was the hero of the day and the working class grunt, the lower middle class guy, was stripped of his money, and hardened in his attitude. As for the middle class man, he was threatened by feminism and his wife having to go to work and maybe top him, since he was brought up thinking that was failure. The real winners were the upper middle class who culturally became rich.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not an economist, but I think a big idea to come out of this era is that everyone except the rich, and that would include much of the nouveau riche, or what used to be considered the upper middle class, have become a debtor class. Very few people in the U.S. can afford their extravagant consumer driven lifestyle on their yearly wage, so they've taken to debt and credit cards for their survival. Traditionally, this is more of a feudal economic system, than anything to do with capitalism, where the average man was told he could start at the bottom of the ladder, as a working class grunt, or a guy in the mail-room, and work his way on up the economic ladder if he had the initiative and will. Sure, that still happens from time to time even though 'interns' are a much more popular form of slavery right now and they don't even get paid half the time, and I wonder how high they ever make it up the economic ladder, but times have changed from the days of the vast middle class with less poor, and less wealth among the highest and lowest among us. In some ways, we're all poor now because of the debtor society and I think that's what the Occupy Wall St. movement was getting at, but just because we're in debt doesn't mean our middle class assumptions have left us, since most Americans consider themselves middle class, because they don't want to be thought of as poor, with a low self esteem. Most people want to see themselves in the middle, normal citizens of the state. As for the wealthy, they are storing their money overseas, or in tax shelters, because they are the money lenders, and they know better than anyone how poor the Country really is, even if we're all imagining ourselves bourgeoise bohemians, talking philosophy in coffee bars like poor beatniks, and driving around in a Lexus.

So, where does this leave the poor? Well, they seem to be an institutionalized class circa 2015 much like the wealthy, and are born into their circumstances. This certainly flies in the face of one of the great American myths when I grew up that we lived in a society with free movement between the classes, but economic circumstances change, and this one certainly has. I also have a feeling there are a lot of people who'd also classify as poor nowadays even though they are well educated, and from the perspective of my World War II Grandparents, these folks should've been shoe-ins to make it in America. This is partly their doing through a philosophy of 'voluntary poverty' that many artists and intellectuals took to heart in the '60's and '70's when the wealth of the Country was so great that one could imagine 'voluntary poverty' as a cultural stance, but I'm not sure that's as popular anymore. I'd imagine the institutionalized poor, whether white or black, are less educated than their parents were, because of how low the American educational standard has sunk since the '80's, so I'd imagine their ability to think of themselves as anything but poor is harder than ever, and by poor I mean intellectually impoverished' as well as economically. In the weird politics of the day, the white over-educated masses who may be poor tend to take on many middle class attitudes, since they aren't accepted by the poor, because they aren't from a middle class or nouveau riche family. I probably fall into this category but when I was younger I was confused why more of the newly poor weren't more revolutionary in their thinking, and self identifying as middle class, but culturally it makes sense, since the rich survive.