Sorry for this question. I am still learning.
Something that has always bothered me is how much u.s. politicians obsess over helping the middle class. Seems like the two major parties talk about it a lot. Why do they endlessly talk about helping the middle class, but never seem to acknowledge or focus on helping the (lower?) or poverty or proletariat class?
To me it sounds like the middle class by definition should be not be as in need as other classes that don’t have as much? What’s the purpose of this?
Edit: Thanks for all your responses. :)
It’s important to note that to an American, they’re middle class almost completely irrespective of their circumstances. Single parent living in subsidized housing, working for near minimum wage? Middle class. Lower middle class, maybe, if we’re not feeling defensive. McMansion, dual income family with one doctor and one lawyer? Driving expensive European cars (one for each adult, plus one for the teenager), vacationing abroad yearly, middle class, maybe, maybe, upper middle class if they’re feeling embarrassed about their wealth.
Your family owns the only plumbing company in town and you have several houses a small fleet of vehicles and dozens of employees. Your surname is a local household name. The highschool gym is named after your grandpa. Sure you’re prosperous but upper class? Idk, I mean listen you have to go to work, sometimes, at the sinecure your dad got you at said plumbing company. Real rich people don’t have to pretend to work, right?
Everyone pretends to be middle class.
To add to the other comments here, the middle class doesn’t really exist. So when you promise to help the middle class, you’re promising to help no one.
There are clearly defined classes with clearly defined and antagonistic interests, so the mythical middle class is a way for the bourgeoisie to hide the fact that they have no interest in serving the working class by claiming to serve an “average” class that doesn’t exist and seems to in practice have the same interests as the bourgeoisie.
The “piss on my head and tell me it’s raining” of the American political jargon.
Yup I came here to say basically this. The middle class is a scapegoat that reinforces the idea that you’re a moral and abject failure for not rising to this gilded position within American society. Solving the issues of the underclass undermines the entire middle-class mythos and would cause a self reinforcing reaction from those who think they are in that class. By giving the underclass more you create the perception that you’re not helping the middle class. Forget rising tides lifting all boats.
The “middle class” is an extremely nebulous class of people mostly defined by vibes, and since most people don’t want to identify as outright poor, they like to identify as middle class since it’s basically open to anybody due to how vague it is.
Poor people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as “lower middle class”), wealthy people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as “upper middle class”), and so politicians can make hollow but safe appeals to this nebulous class that tons of people identify as, but which nobody really coherently belongs too.
So basically, “I will help the middle class” is speaking to no-one, because the middle class doesn’t really exist, but people will hear it and think you’re speaking to them.
this. it’s a rhetorical tool that misidentifies the interests of the working class with those of the owning class.
…with the goal of suppressing class consciousness, and dividing workers. The same is true of anti-immigration rhetoric, sexism, and racism. “See that ‘other’ kind of person over there? They want what’s yours.” It all distracts from the capitalists robbing us blind.
You have to remember the puritanical roots of the country.
The upper/middle/lower class distinctions are not economic:
- upper = rich;
- middle = comfortable;
- lower = poor.
They’re instead based on morality:
- upper = blessed;
- middle = virtuous strivers;
- lower = good-for-nothing work-shy losers.
The upper class have been divinely marked for better things. They are never helped. Everything they receive is ordained. The lower class are scum who it would be wrong to ever help, since it would only encourage their inherent unwillingness to work. The middle class, then, are the self-made people who work hard for what they get and obviously deserve a little more, which in self-image terms is basically everyone.
Politicians promising to help the middle class are, therefore, declaring that they will reward the worthy (and punish the unworthy), which is a popular sentiment.
random stat i half remember from
is something that like 80% of Americans consider themselves to be “middle class”. When politicians say “middle class”, they can appeal to basically everyone while the average listener feels like they’re being spoken to more specificallybecause 99% of poor people identify themselves as middle class because they don’t want to be “the poor”
99% of rich people also classify themselves as middle or upper-middle fwiw.
Citation Needed Episode 91: It’s Time to Retire the Term “Middle Class”
The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.
But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it’s a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty.
Because the “middle class” is a fictitious category that everyone from people struggling to stay above the poverty line to literal millionaires think they belong to. It’s what “respectable” people are, the small landholders and people who aspire to own land.
It was cynically created by encouraging suburban land ownership among certain privileged (white) working class demographics, and later reinforced by encouraging tying small amounts of stock ownership into pensions or workers’ benefits. It’s a way of making workers mistakenly see their own material interests as being aligned with the ruling class’s, and insulating them against reforms that would benefit them directly at the cost of meaning less value for the meager property they’ve acquired.
It has a lot to do with the concepts of “The American Dream” & “Equality of Opportunity” being poor is seen ultimately as being a personal/moral failure and all poor people instead of demanding change should instead keep quiet and buckle down and maybe if they work hard enough they will be able to send their kid to college so they can join the mythical middle class and live a cushy middle class lifestyle with a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids and a dog etc.
because americans are the most propagandized people in the history of planet earth.
everyone thinks they’re “middle class”. even people who know for a fact they’re poor as hell will also identify themselves as “middle class” and then people who are super well off are clueless to the suffering of the real world so they also assume they’re “middle class” because they don’t interact with poor people and then out of their 10 friends their family is only the 6th richest
Because it’s vague as a concept so their messaging can also be vague
Case in point to what everyone else is saying.
I carpooled at a previous job with two people.
One of them was from a stable established family that owned a nice house swimming pool, land, vehicles, and equipment, and he could have inherited the successful family business with government contracts on the order of a million dollars if he wanted to, in addition to the extensive stock portfolio he’d been set up with. The other was raised by a single mom in a trailer as 1 of 6 children, and never had so much as a career path.
Both of these guys adamantly claimed that they were middle class- the first because he was making about the median income for the area, the second because he and his ex had once had a combined income of over $100,000.
One thing I’ve heard from Americans is that what everyone else calls ‘working class’ they call ‘middle class’. This is probably due to a hope that one day they will ‘make it big’, and a reluctance to see themselves as ‘below average’.
one thing i’ve noticed in british political discourse is that “middle class” is still used, but it emphatically does not include the working masses. my sense is that it encapsulates professionals and petty bourgeoisie, as well as having more rigid cultural identity connotations? and then “upper class” is like, multimillionaires and people with titles? someone tells me if i’m off here.
This is correct. ‘Middle class’ is more or less ‘people who need to work for a living, but can work on their terms’. Petty bourgeoisie, professionals, people who see themselves as ‘respectable’ and ‘above the riff-raff’.
It has a lot to do with the idea that there is socio-economic mobility in the US if they work hard enough. Add to that the fact that many people see themselves as middle class rather than lower class even though the vast majority of the US is closer, if not already, lower class.
