No they don't. Bruce Bartlett has no scruples left (link):
Social class also involves self-identification. According to the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, which has been asking people what social class they belong to since 1972, more than 90 percent of Americans put themselves squarely in the middle – belonging either to the working class or the middle class.
This so broadly defines the middle it makes the definition meaningless.
This so broadly defines the middle it makes the definition meaningless.
The chief marker of membership in the middle class is homeownership, which the one third of Americans who are renters in 35 percent of the occupied dwellings in the US cannot claim, and they don't, despite what Bruce Bartlett says. They know they are working class, and they admit it.
About equal numbers have said historically that they are either working class or middle class, 45 percent each, by Bartlett's own admission.
Here's his table of the results of the latest self-identification of social class by Americans, which shows an increase in the percentage of Americans self-identifying in 2010 as working class and a more substantial decrease in the percentage of those self-identifying as middle class, just what you would expect during the collapse of the housing bubble and the decline in homeownership:
About equal numbers have said historically that they are either working class or middle class, 45 percent each, by Bartlett's own admission.
Here's his table of the results of the latest self-identification of social class by Americans, which shows an increase in the percentage of Americans self-identifying in 2010 as working class and a more substantial decrease in the percentage of those self-identifying as middle class, just what you would expect during the collapse of the housing bubble and the decline in homeownership:
