Liberals accuse Republicans of engaging in class warfare. Conservatives accuse Republicans of engaging in class warfare. Cynics accuse both parties of existing “solely to hurl rhetoric at each other and pander to the the most ignorant of their base constituencies.”
While the Antiplanner is sympathetic to the cynical view, I also think the idea of class deserves more attention than most Americans give it. Too many people use the term “middle class” when they mean “middle income,” which is something quite different. Classes have distinct cultural values, which may be quite independent of income. Classes also tend to be rigid, with various barriers prevent people from moving from one class to another, whereas income levels like “1 percent-99 percent” are quite porous.
The Antiplanner sees four main classes in America today. The upper class includes people who are so wealthy that work is merely an option. Perhaps only 1 or 2 percent are in this group (which is not the same as the “1 percent” which includes people who do work but earn large amounts). The middle class includes people (and their families) whose work involves thinking more than labor. For the most part, they are college educated, which allows us to estimate their numbers: just under 30 percent of working-age Americans have bachelor’s degrees. The underclass includes people who are permanently poor, not just people who are between jobs or recent college graduates who do not yet have jobs (who are included in Census Bureau poverty numbers). Around 10 percent of Americans fall in this category.
Finally, the remaining roughly 60 percent consists of working class people (and their families), whose work is physical or repetitive rather than knowledge-based.
