[true_religion]

> Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be simply the average in a certain country.

That assumes a normal distribution of wealth. In an authoritarian aristocracy or another similar government structure, you'd see pareto distribution wherein the leadership has 99% of the wealth and the average person is sharing 1%.

Therein by the 'average', there is no middle class.

I think... economically, this is quite true: there is no middle class. Yet we still call people who look like the classical middle class of yesteryear, middle class: professionals, white-collar workers, freelancers, small business owners. It's more of a social class now, than an economic one.