>This is an honest question: why distinguish on the basis of luxuries? Why not distinguish on the basis of whether one has to work for one's living or not? In some families, two earners can pull in 220,000 but, depending on how extended they are, they could be a month away from the sidewalk. Others (who have capital) also have the same income without ever having to work a day in their life. Granted, both cases depend upon the same economic system, yet it makes more sense to me to put the first family in the working class and the second in the capitalist class.
Nothing else makes any sense to me either.
>I am not trained in economics, so please, why not slice it and dice it this way? Is it for a substantial economic reason? or for a political reason?
I speculate that its a morality thing. Some people on the left seem to want to believe that the working class is somehow morally superior to the capitalist class. Now at the same time they have a lingering adherence to the old protestant abhorrence for extravagance. So they can't abide the idea of including those moral degenerates as part of their idealised and pure working class.
Likewise with those who cling to the odd (but widespread) notion that people in managerial or "co-ordinator" occupations are not working class, I think. They are excluded from the working class on purely moral grounds. Some people even exclude cops from their definition of working class.
Anyhow, its just a theory and I'm not trained in psychology either. ;-)
But there is no objective definition for "middle class", so I see no reason to believe such a class exists. I think its just a category people use to lump together all those odds and sods they don't like, but who obviously can't be counted as capitalist class.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas