well, he didn't mean middle class in the sense of petit bourgeouisie. he meant, not rich.
>
> Many businesses at that level (less than several millions a year
> operating profit _after_ the proprietor's own "salary" -- have only one
> or two or three customers, and the decision of one corporation to do its
> buying elsewhere would sink the small business. A highly unstable
> position. The woman's pause is probably rooted in that instability.
are you conflating the stories? this woman's husband is an investment banker raking in millions. her argument for why they wren't rich was that she didn't "feel" rich and didn't live "richly" -- her kids' clothes come from lands' end, she said. for people like this, the old-style "plunge" might actually be instructive. i thnk there is a stigma attached to being rich that people want to avoid, in their own psyches, and that this has as much to do with the phenomenon of no one thinking themselves upper class as the famous keeping up with the joneses factor.
btw -- as a sole proprietor, myself, these days, i'm well aware of the instabilities. i don't think they apply to this one-investment-banking-income family of five. j