There’s a long answer and basically it’s my thesis that as Jim Crow was obviously untenable long-term, the powers that be set about transposing the American apartheid model onto the economic sphere so that way it becomes diffuse and mystified; there’s no clear way to dismantle the system or to petition it for redress and so on (well, I can think of one way…)

Basically the middle class in America is a pseudo-caste that exists because of the economic conditions that caused it to flourish by design.

Here’s my hot take on this whole deal

There’s other stuff to be discussed on thw topic of your question about how this shapes and structures aspiration, how it obscures the realities of class warfare, and how strictly limits the scope of what’s acceptable within bourgeois democracy etc. etc. that I’m sure other comrades have answered better than I could.

because 99% of poor people identify themselves as middle class because they don’t want to be “the poor”

False hope of a bygone age. Deflect from the oligarchs keeping the working poor down and developing class concioisness. The myth of the American Dream and the nuclear family. As long as there is hope and enough bullshit to weasel people into thinking someday they’ll own a modest $400k “starter home”.

Because it’s vague as a concept so their messaging can also be vague

everyone thinks they’re “middle class”. even people who know for a fact they’re poor as hell will also identify themselves as “middle class” and then people who are super well off are clueless to the suffering of the real world so they also assume they’re “middle class” because they don’t interact with poor people and then out of their 10 friends their family is only the 6th richest

The “middle class” is an extremely nebulous class of people mostly defined by vibes, and since most people don’t want to identify as outright poor, they like to identify as middle class since it’s basically open to anybody due to how vague it is.

Poor people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as “lower middle class”), wealthy people will call themselves middle class (maybe qualify it as “upper middle class”), and so politicians can make hollow but safe appeals to this nebulous class that tons of people identify as, but which nobody really coherently belongs too.

So basically, “I will help the middle class” is speaking to no-one, because the middle class doesn’t really exist, but people will hear it and think you’re speaking to them.

Citation Needed Episode 91: It’s Time to Retire the Term “Middle Class”

The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.

But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it’s a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty.

because americans are the most propagandized people in the history of planet earth.

It’s important to note that to an American, they’re middle class almost completely irrespective of their circumstances. Single parent living in subsidized housing, working for near minimum wage? Middle class. Lower middle class, maybe, if we’re not feeling defensive. McMansion, dual income family with one doctor and one lawyer? Driving expensive European cars (one for each adult, plus one for the teenager), vacationing abroad yearly, middle class, maybe, maybe, upper middle class if they’re feeling embarrassed about their wealth.

Your family owns the only plumbing company in town and you have several houses a small fleet of vehicles and dozens of employees. Your surname is a local household name. The highschool gym is named after your grandpa. Sure you’re prosperous but upper class? Idk, I mean listen you have to go to work, sometimes, at the sinecure your dad got you at said plumbing company. Real rich people don’t have to pretend to work, right?

Everyone pretends to be middle class.

To add to the other comments here, the middle class doesn’t really exist. So when you promise to help the middle class, you’re promising to help no one.

There are clearly defined classes with clearly defined and antagonistic interests, so the mythical middle class is a way for the bourgeoisie to hide the fact that they have no interest in serving the working class by claiming to serve an “average” class that doesn’t exist and seems to in practice have the same interests as the bourgeoisie.

The “piss on my head and tell me it’s raining” of the American political jargon.

One thing I’ve heard from Americans is that what everyone else calls ‘working class’ they call ‘middle class’. This is probably due to a hope that one day they will ‘make it big’, and a reluctance to see themselves as ‘below average’.

random stat i half remember from is something that like 80% of Americans consider themselves to be “middle class”. When politicians say “middle class”, they can appeal to basically everyone while the average listener feels like they’re being spoken to more specifically

Because middle class is a dog whistle for white and working class is a dog whistle for black/brown. Except lots of black and brown people who live comfortable lives think politicians are talking about them.

Because the “middle class” is a fictitious category that everyone from people struggling to stay above the poverty line to literal millionaires think they belong to. It’s what “respectable” people are, the small landholders and people who aspire to own land.

It was cynically created by encouraging suburban land ownership among certain privileged (white) working class demographics, and later reinforced by encouraging tying small amounts of stock ownership into pensions or workers’ benefits. It’s a way of making workers mistakenly see their own material interests as being aligned with the ruling class’s, and insulating them against reforms that would benefit them directly at the cost of meaning less value for the meager property they’ve acquired.

It has a lot to do with the concepts of “The American Dream” & “Equality of Opportunity” being poor is seen ultimately as being a personal/moral failure and all poor people instead of demanding change should instead keep quiet and buckle down and maybe if they work hard enough they will be able to send their kid to college so they can join the mythical middle class and live a cushy middle class lifestyle with a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids and a dog etc.