>A middle class salary they can survive on for how long?
Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either. 76% of people don't have any means to support themselves 6+ months out if they lose employment. Why should they?
> Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either.... Why should they?
Those people aren't really middle class. They just think they are.
"Middle class" has political and functional meanings beyond just "having near-average income". Nobody living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter how big those paychecks are, can really function within the middle class.
The difference between lower class and middle class isn't income, it's assets. Because only assets beget independent economic and political power.
As recently as mid-20th century, an American talking about being "middle class" would have been referring to ownership of assets. Originally, of course, middle class was anyone who was neither a serf or a noble.
If you can't afford to tell your employer "fuck you" today, then you're a serf, and you have very little leverage.
You can be middle class and live paycheck-to-paycheck. There is nothing about that arrangement that prevents some folks from having assets, there is a reason the term "house poor" exists and there is a reason why foreclosure rates shot up for middle class people in the 2009 housing collapse.
Someone who is house poor has liabilities nearly as big as their assets, so their net assets are still nearly zero.
Nobody who actually owned their house free and clear got foreclosed on.
Again, if your existence is so tenuous, you are not middle class. At least not if the word still means what it meant for the past several hundred years.
Those people aren't really middle class. They just think they are.
"Middle class" has political and functional meanings beyond just "having near-average income". Nobody living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter how big those paychecks are, can really function within the middle class.
The difference between lower class and middle class isn't income, it's assets. Because only assets beget independent economic and political power.
As recently as mid-20th century, an American talking about being "middle class" would have been referring to ownership of assets. Originally, of course, middle class was anyone who was neither a serf or a noble.
If you can't afford to tell your employer "fuck you" today, then you're a serf, and you have very little leverage.