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middle class

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

By the numbers Marriage has become a mark of status, increasingly the preserve of the wealthy and educated. Today, 26% of poor, 39% of working-class, and 56% of middle- and upper-class adults aged 18 to 55 are married, according to research by Opportunity America and the American Enterprise Institute. This compares with 51%, 57% and 65% respectively in 1990. The Guardian, October 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
California Lakewood exists because at a given time in a different economy it seemed an efficient idea to provide population density for the mall and a labor pool for the Douglas plant. There are a lot of places like Lakewood in California. They were California's mill towns, breeder towns for the boom. When times were good and there was money to spread around, these were the towns that proved Marx wrong, that managed to increase the proletariat and simultaneously, by calling it middle class, to co-opt it. Joan Didion, “Trouble in Lakewood” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Class struggle The social conflicts which  which industrial life must have fomented,  and which were so terrible in the Flanders  of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,  were already in embryo in the very period of city evolution [in the 11th century].  The antagonism between capital and labor is thereby revealed to be as old as the middle class. Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities © 2023 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [A] kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had. New York Times, March 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for a year. Paul Ryan, 11:51 AM - Feb 2018, extolling the munificent benefits bestowed on ordinary workers by the tax reform bill he championed  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Debt As the fabulous Michael Pettis explained a few days ago in an FT Markets Insight, US national debt levels will continue to rise unless we can spread the wealth more broadly, because as much as the rich can consume, they can’t consume enough to make up for a shrinking middle class, nor do they create enough jobs to make a sustainable labour market. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 31, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democrats What the US left appears to want is social democracy as understood by Robin Hood. It would tax astronomical wealth to fund popular programmes. It would not ask much more of the middle or even the upper middle classes. … This does, however, put them at some odds with the social democrats of Europe, who tax more citizens more heavily. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, Febtruary 26, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Income growth Between 1979 and 2007, income growth in the United States — all of it! — went to the richest 10 percent of earners; the  remaining 90 percent saw their income fall. Examining the distribition of gains, the Congressional Budget Office found that the  income of the top 1 percent rose by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, after federal taxes and government transfer payments such as Social Security. Over the same period, the incomes of the broad middle class — the 60 percent of the population in the middle of the income scale — grew by only 40 percent. And the bottom quintile fared the worst, rising by only 18 percent. Joshua Green, in Rebels © 2024 Kwiple.com
Income growth If there is an explanation as to why U.S. middle-class incomes have stagnated this is it: whatever jobs the United States is able to create are in the least efficient parts of the economy, the types that neither computers, nor China, have yet found a way of eliminating. That trend is starting to lap at the feet of more educated American workers. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality At Yale Law school, I felt like my spaceship had crashed in Oz. People would say with a straight face that a surgeon mother and engineer father were middle-class. In Middletown [Ohio], $160,000 is an unfathomable salary; at Yale Law School, students expect to earn that amount in the first year after law school. Many of them are already worried that it won't be enough. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality I am “just” upper middle class. But my life is one of late-Roman decadence next to that of the median earner. If you are a corporate lawyer (not even a partner) so is yours.  If you send your children to a private school, or live in the catchment area of an acclaimed state one, so, most likely, is yours. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The inflection point on the economic scale comes much earlier than you think. Something dramatic happens between, say, £30,000 a year and £130,000: a sharper change in the texture of life than occurs between the second number and a million. The first jump affects what you can do. The second tends to affect merely how.  The upper middle class can rent in nice districts of world-class cities. The rich can buy there. The average can do neither. The upper middle class can fly to another continent. The rich can fly business. The average must plan and econo- mise to do either. Having passed through the same universities, the upper middle class and the rich are often of a cultural feather. … How often does either befriend a nongraduate Band 5 NHS nurse? Or marry one? Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, Dec. 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Law One of the striking things is that if you're middle class, if you're upper middle class, if you're a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to a legal system. Peter Thiel, billionaire entrepreneur who paid the millions of dollars in legal fees for Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media for posting a tape of him having sex with the wife of his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge © 2016 Kwiple.com
Lobbyists Less than 1 percent of organizations represent the poor. Although blue-collar workers are 24 percent of the population, they are only 1 percent of economic organizations in Washington. White-collar workers make up less than 10 percent of the public, but they are represented by almost 74 percent of economic organizations in DC. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Great Democracy © 2070 Kwiple.com
Middle class  All middle class means now is that you're poor but you don't do meth. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, Jan. 18, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Middle class Far be it from me to deny their value and importance, but a cell phone does not a middle class make. If one lives in a shack, in insalubrious conditions, with a volatile income that is barely above subsistence, and is unable to send his kids to school or offer to his family decent health care, it makes no sense to classify him as part of some imaginary “global middle class” because he can dial a cell phone. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Middle class In 1985, an American man working the typical full-time job could support a family of four on 48 weeks of income, and be able to afford a range of nutritious foods, a three-bedroom house, a compre- hensive health insurance plan, a family car, even saving to put both kids through the state university. In 2022, paying for all that would require 62 weeks of his income, which is a problem, there being only 52 weeks in a year.  These figures come from the Cost-of-Thriving Index (Coti), which compares the rate at which wages are rising to the  rate of cost increases for middle-class staples. Oren Cass, Financial Times, February 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Middle class It turns out that the middle classes of the new despotisms defy modern social science predictions. Their educaction, occupations and assets incline them to be loyal to the system: they show few of the signs of wanting to walk in the footsteps of the independent- minded, property-owning citizens of the early modern period. … When it comes to democracy, the fickleness of these middle classes is remarkable. John Keane, The New Despotism © 2022 Kwiple.com
Middle class The middle-class share of the population now ranges from around 50% in the U.S. and Israel to around 70% in Nordic and some other European countries. The U.S. stands out in having a relatively small middle class given its high median income. Among other countries, a higher median income tends to be associated with a larger middle class. Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2019 [The OECD defines middle class as individuals with incomes between 75% and 200% of the median] © 2019 Kwiple.com
Middle class No bourgeoisie, no democracy. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy © 2015 Kwiple.com
Middle class One lesson of the new despotism is that the middle classes have no instinctual love of open power-sharing. Guided by a mixture of motives, including greed, professional and family honor, respectability, and anxiety about about the future, they seem happy to be kidnapped by state rulers, willing (as per the Stockholm syndrome) to be bought off with lavish services, cash payments, and invisible benefits such as being left alone to live their lives. … [They] definitely have a taste for regime stability plus private comforts. John Keane, The New Despotism © 2022 Kwiple.com
Middle class Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin who is also close to formalising his campaign, has similarly championed his middle-class roots, noting while out on the campaign trail that he is wearing a $1 sweater. Financial Times, April 13, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Middle class What used to be is gone and what ought to be ought not to be so hard  “Gravity's Gone,” by Drive-By Truckers © 2016 Kwiple.com
Serf the middle class Replace their income with debt, then collect the interest © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c All four of the narratives I've described emerged from America's failure to sustain and enlarge the middle-class democracy of the postwar years. They all respond to real problems. Each offers a value that the others need and lacks ones that the others have. Free America celebrates the energy of the unencumbered individual. Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change. Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits. Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid. … They all anoint winners and losers. … I don’t much want to live in the republic of any of them. George Packer, The Atlantic, July/August 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union Death rate of middle-aged whites surging atop drug and alcohol abuse, liver disease, suicide © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Democrats work to raise the bottom and cap the top Republicans work to push most middlers to the bottom and raise the remnant to the top  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Hasta la vista middle class © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union Hasta la vista mom & pop Abercrombie & Fitch . Aeropostale . Albertso ns . Amazon . American Eagle Outfitters . Ba rnes & Noble . Bath & Body Works  .  Bed Bat h & Beyond  .  Best Buy . Burger King . Chick- fil-A . Chipotle . Costco . CVS . Dillard's . Doll ar General . Dollar Tree . DSW .  Dunkin' Don uts  . Family Dollar . Foot Locker . Gap . H&M Home Depot . IKEA . J.C. Penney . J. Crew . J os. A. Bank . Kohl's . Kroger . LongHorn Stea khouse .  Lowe's .  Macy's .  Marshalls . McDo nald's  .  Mens Warehouse   .  Michaels Stores Nieman Marcus  .  Nordstrom  .  Olive Garden Payless Shoesource  .  Pink . Publix . Rite Aid Ross Stores  .  Safeway .  Saks . Sears .  Stapl es . Starbucks . Subway . T J Maxx . Taco Bel l . Target . Toys “R” Us . Victoria's Secret . W algreens  . Walmart . Wendy's . Whole Foods © 2015 Kwiple.com
 
State of the union No longer a middle-class nation © 2015 Kwiple.com