Middle-class

When I was a kid, I considered my family middle-class.  And yes, I was living in the U.S., which is supposed to be a classless, "we are all equal"  kind of place.  But that has never actually been a reality; just the ideal.
Today, I watch who calls themselves middle class, and it is everyone that is not receiving full government subsidies to the top 2 percent.  That translates to everyone making from $23,851 to $224,000.  All the families or households in this range are middle-class.  That is a lot of range, and the actual way of life of the bottom third of that has little in common with the top third.  
So what are we really talking about?  Maybe a way of life?  A way of thinking?  A self-image?  Who says  "I am middle-class"  
First, people whose parents said it.  Perhaps it is genetic. (it is early in the morning, i like to be ridiculous early in the morning)   It is definitely part of a family's identity.  And for a lot of people I have met, it is a positive thing,  like saying they come from a good family, are good people, have value to society, are givers not takers, work hard, do the right thing, care about each other, live right.  
Sometimes, I hear people divide the middle-class into its own 3 levels, the upper-middle-class, which is what television loves to display in its sitcoms and dramas as the the regular people of this country; the working class, which are those people that are not at poverty level(barely), consider themselves middle-class, and frequently get displayed in movies that are more gritty, you know, the ones where people struggle a bit, have dramatic emotional lives, and the lighting seems to be a bit dark--what film are they using for that, or is it all digital and using filtering effects?  
Reality is, my family was very much working class--first generation off the farm.  Not the corporate farm, more like the "grapes of wrath" farm.  And it may have been genetic.  I used to chide my grandmother that we had great genes, came from good hardy peasant stock.  She had been raised with certain Victorian sensibilities and did not find that funny.  Reality is, most of this country has similar roots.  We aren't all the lost descendants of royals and nobles.  We all have relatives that excelled in something, maybe a lot of relatives, maybe direct ancestors, maybe someone we highly respect and have no idea we share a few genes with.  There is a lot more to life than genetics.
Highly under-rated is luck.  The differences in the life of a person with great giftedness in iron works and when they were born could send then to a decidedly middle-class blacksmith position in a certain time periods, a very low-wage industrial position in the bottom of the working-class at other times, or the top of the art industry with timing and luck, guaranteeing the upper-middle-class, or even above. (think Anish Kapooar. Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns)  Most artists feel lucky if they get to make a basic living that includes not have 1-3 other jobs to pay the bills. 
Successful people that make it to the top of their field usually deny the impact of luck.  It was hard work, perseverance, incredible planning, goal-directedness---.  Who are they kidding?   We have all seen people that did all those things all their lives---truly middle-class beliefs guiding them--and died no closer to that goal than they started.  Their lives were not wasted.  We learn during our lives and influence the people around us.  Some people, like the highly unlucky Van Gogh, become Iconic after their deaths, their talents only recognized when they can no longer be lucky enough to become successful. (post-mortem success--what does that even mean?)  Others gain wisdoms in there lack of luck, learning to appreciate the lessons life has taught them and valuing more than the ideal they started with.  Some of them get to star in documentaries about how Mr. or Ms. middleclass ended up homeless for 20 years.  Luck.
So who are the middle-class?  What is their place in society?  Why do they even exist?  And they have always existed in some form.  The world has never been just the rich and the poor.  The middle-class is the meat of the sandwich---the rich need us because they couldn't be rich without our work efforts and consumerism; the poor need us because without us, the rich would probably exterminate or enslave them.  The middle-class people with their empathy and compassion are  who actually volunteer to help the poor, who points out the inequities of society, who fight in revolutions when those inequities quit being addressed at the level of the government law-making.  The Middle-class, with its large numbers and wide range is the majority of the population and thus has the ability to turn the country in any direction it desires.  
Currently, the middle-class has a large number of people that are sure they are dependent upon the rich for their place in society.  They have "drank the koolaid" so to speak.  They have bought in to the idea that everything good they have is dependent upon rich people letting them work and rich people making them jobs, rich people supporting their cities arts projects, schools, etc, etc, etc.  But not one rich person has ever hired anyone to do a job that they didn't need done.  When you go to work, your work is necessary to your place of employment.  No one puts in a machine part that 's not needed for the correct function of the machine.  Our jobs are not charity.  And we are paid only as much as the machine feels is necessary to keep us--supply and demand.  If a lot of people can do the job with little training, then no matter how physically difficult, dangerous, or hard on the workers mental health, the job will pay little and will have lots of people willing to do it for that.  That is why we try to get our children the education and skills they need to do something they enjoy and that there is high demand for or in which the requirements are so specific there is little competition.  And we want them to be lucky.  Luck is required for almost all of the jobs that can carry a person from middle-class to rich.  If you doubt that, check out the number of wait staff in Hollywood waiting on their big break.  Watch the career of a few of the singers on American Idol, or the Indies out of Nashville.  And find the stats on the amount of money spent on competitive sports in elementary school and the number of them that are involved then compare it to the number professional athletes that moved to rich, or even the number that were able to get a full scholarship out of it.   
In my lifetime, most of the young people I have talked to expected to get lucky.  The goal is not middle-class, its moving to rich.  Some have a plan.  Some are brilliant or talented or creative.  Some have parents that are already at the top of the middle-class income and have no doubt they can make it.  The latter are probably the only ones that don't require much luck.
If, on the other hand, your goal is "rich" and your currently living in subsidized housing with a father in prison and a mother who can't get enough meth to make the day ok, you need a lot of luck no matter how brilliant, and talented and creative you are.  I have met several young people that should have been highly successful due to their giftedness, but by twenty they were dead.  And god help the children born in poverty that suffered from the neurological effects of poor diet, lack of cognitive stimulation, emotional and physical abuse and no role models that could show them what success looked like.  No amount of luck can fix that.
The middle-class needs to take back its position of power and control.  Majority rules.  And the majority is not a political party--its people that share an ideal and goal.  The middle-class heart needs to open up and stop letting the fearmongers run them toward the cliff.  We can be strong.  We can save the world.
With a little luck.
I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.