What Is Middle Class?

A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Proctor & Gamble was no longer marketing to the middle class but instead has a two-tier marketing strategy (if you don’t have a subscription, you can get the gist of the article here). This has led to all kinds of discussion by the chattering class about America’s disappearing middle class.

The implication of the WSJ article is that Proctor & Gamble is marketing to an upper class and a lower class. The Antiplanner disagrees. What we are seeing instead is a re-bifurcation of what for a time was commonly called the middle class into what sociologists usually define as the middle and working classes.

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