Class Structure in the Contemporary USA

I’ve been listening to a couple of lectures about the class structure of 19th century Europe, where it was taken for granted that the “middle class” denoted a median social position between the aristocracy on top and the peasant/proletariat at the bottom. There was no reason to expect that the median household would be middle class. On the contrary.

I think that helps shed some light on this hardy perennial:

But in some expensive sections of the country, many families with income levels near the $250,000 cutoff insist that they have more in common with middle-class Americans than millionaires or billionaires.

“You take a couple in Westchester County, a police officer with a lot of overtime and a principal at a public school,” said Vincent R. Cervone, a certified public accountant in New York City. “They’re grateful to be working. They aren’t in danger of eviction or starving. But the cost of the average house is $500,000 — five times the national average. Taxes are higher than the rest of the country. If they have a couple of children in college, can you call them rich? Not by any common-sense standard.”

The merits of different approaches to tax policy aside, perhaps the best way to describe the social reality that Cervone is noting here is simply to abandon the idea of the United States as a predominantly middle class society. Instead, there’s a smallish economic elite composed primarily of high-ranking executives and the princes of Wall Street. Then there’s a much larger middle class composed, more or less, of people with college degrees like this hypothetical cop/principal couple. And then there’s the working class majority with no bachelor’s degree.

Now none of that has any particular implications for tax policy, which really ought to be determined by thinking about how to raise a given sum of money efficiently, but I think it provides a better handle on the actual experience of class in today’s America.