First thing we do is shoot "The Middle Class"

In certain places, capital can’t (as) easily replace labor: * restaurants * retail * live entertainment * the movies Know who doesn’t go out 20% more if they have 20% more money? The rich. Know who does? The middle class. If you want to maximize job creation, you put cash in the hands of people who will spend it quickly — those who have little cash in the bank. They’ll spend a little bit of it at a time, spread out over their community… but there’s a lot of “they” there. Before you know it, restaurants are hiring, as are their suppliers. All those folks who work at stadiums, arenas, etc are hiring, as are their suppliers. And so forth. Rich people choose to spend money based on lots of factors not related to exactly how much money is in the bank right now, since there’s enough money in the bank that they won’t feel the impact of this shopping trip. The middle class, however, dramatically changes how much we buy based on how much money we have left after paying the mortgage, student loans, utilities, groceries, and for our kids’ activities. Give us more money, and we’ll spend it… creating lots of jobs right here in our own communities. stomv @ June 11, 2011 at 4:22 pm

Like a million others before him, Mr. Poster drags in the usual All-Wunnerful and Best-Deserving Ones as _The Key to All Political Mythologies_

Unlike most of the muzzy-minded, however, he does give a rough idea where he sits -- where, that is, the Centre of the Middle of the Heart of the Homeclass is really and truly located. I still like the traditional Texas account better -- "right next to the yellow stripe and the dead armadillos" -- but to define TMC as "worriers about ‘how much money we have left after paying the mortgage, student loans, utilities, groceries, and for our kids’ activities’" may do, if one drops the ‘utilities’ and the ‘groceries’, which, after all, even the Bad Poor must worry about at least a little.

To qualify for Mr. Poster’s Class, then, the candidate must have had at least part of a tertiary education, own his-and-his-bank’s own domicile, and -- this may be the true Ground Zero -- expect that the next generation of mediocrity will do the same. [*]

Being crude and hasty, this keyboard first mentally turns that into something like "Percentiles eighty-one through ninety-seven of the income-and-wealth distribution" and then compares it with a similar reduction already in hand of what adherents of the Party of Grant and Hoover mean when *they* burn incense to TMC. Percentiles 91-98, that one has been tentatively fixed at, though with some suspicion that the lower threshold maybe ought to be a couple of points higher.

Though considerably more liberal than the G.O.P.’s, Mr. Poster’s middle remains a long way from what a Martian mathematician would come up with (#34-#66) A long way from it in the upmarket direction.

However, the student should bear in mind that (almost) everybody who relies on cant about "the middle class" has two completely different notions of the thing. Everything so far refers to the "middle class" that the mediocrats (belong to themselves and therefore) think wunnerful and wanna see get all their just deserts and then some dessert as well.

There is also, however, a sort of "external middle class" [**] of use mostly for agitation and propaganda. This ghostly entity consists of approximately percentiles six through ninety-six, regardless of the party or ideology of the agitpropper. Pretty well everybody, that is. These good folks are -- one scarcely needs to spell it out -- the supposed beneficiaries of whatever crank panacæa is being vended. The real beneficiares, of course, are that "internal middle class" of which the speaker fancies herself in the midst. [***]


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[*] I take "our kids’ activities" to be basically H*rv*rd-admission-oriented, excluding those activities which scions of the Nobility, or brats of the Bad Poor, are equally prone to as irrelevant for this discussion.

[**] Though the conceptions differ, I borrow the terminology from the late Prof. Dr. Toynbee, inventor or discoverer of the "external proletariat."

[***] More strictly, the agitpropper’s own Classmates are the *intended* beneficiaries. _Errare est humanum_, however, and sometimes others benefit unintendedly.

Notice, by the way, that I speak here only of sincere and honest cranks and self-servicers. Those who spout economic voodoo incantations for consumption by others that they would never dream of takin’ seriously themselves are a separate topic. Were "The Middle Class" always a flat-out lie, it would matter far less than it does _quâ_ muddle.