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Revision as of 22:12, 5 May 2004 by 82.43.76.52 (talk) (Europe and the US --> the developed world)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The middle class (or middle classes) comprises a social group once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the working class. Since the working classes constituted the vast majority of the population, the middle classes actually lay near the top of the social pyramid.
In the developed world, industrialization eventually caused the middle class to swell at the expense of the lower, so that by the middle of the 20th century it constituted a majority. However, this is not true on a global scale. Currently, some swell the label to cover most members of these societies and their norms.
The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined. By education, money or wealth, environment of upbringing, birth (genetic relationships), social network, etc. These are all related, though far from deterministically dependent.
As the swollen middle class lost its distinctive usefulness as a label, observers invented sub-labels: we often detect in contemporary societies an "upper middle class" and a "lower middle class". However, some have argued that the "lower-middle" class merely represents a materially privileged (by global standards) but positionally disadvantaged working class. Sociologists have argued that such people are not a part of the middle class at all. On the other hand, one could regard the western countries as having outsourced the labour requirements previously fulfilled by the working classes to, for example, sweatshops in India. Clearly industrialisation has reduced those requirements in some ways, but given that the richest countries buy goods from the poorest in quantities they could not produce themselves, it does not seem to have removed them.
While 95 percent of Americans identify themselves as middle-class, using the measures of sociology the reality seems different: Some of these individuals are (in those terms) lower or upper class.
Modern theories of political economy consider a large middle class to be a beneficial, stabilizing influence on society, because it has neither the explosive revolutionary tendencies of the lower class , nor the stultifying greedy tendencies of the upper class .
Threats to the middle class
In the 1990s and 2000s, many feared that the spreading wealth gap would lead to a "collapse of the middle" in American society. Political theory predicts that such a happening would be disastrous. A modern threat to the middle class is downsizing in many sectors of the American economy, and the systematic elimination of unionized labor.
The middle class and politics
In democratic societies, politicans typically target the critical demographic of the middle classes, as it includes many swing voters. This is attempted (and apparently achieved) by pandering to their tastes, as party researchers and ad men see them.
Around 1980, when asked what level of personal income would qualify as middle-class, George H. W. Bush replied: $50,000. In fact, only 5 percent of the U.S. population was making that level of income at the time.
For Marxist views on this class, compare bourgeoisie. Note that this is not the same thing as middle class; see also bohemian.