Many labor activists consider “middle class” a sloppy formulation that serves to marginalize working-class history and heritage—and obfuscate the exploitation of one class by another. But “middle class,” as a concept, actually does double duty. The middle class exists as both a historic construct and a statistical reality. Middle-class people, statistically speaking, earn incomes squarely in the middle of a society’s income distribution. The higher the share of a society’s populace that falls within a “middle class” range, researchers on economic inequality have shown, the healthier the society for working people—and everyone else as well.
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