Impact of the Vanishing Middle Class

Before the Democratic Convention began, someone asked about the definition of the Middle Class. With so much rhetoric flying across the nation about who is in the Middle Class, where the poverty line resides, who are considered the rich (the Upper Class), and who is going about begging for a living, it was time to stop and answer the question. To a great extent, it impacts and colors how Government, both Federal and State, determine how health care dollars are allocated and to whom.

The person who posed the question had the following commentary to support it. "It used to be those who were not living in poverty but also not those living in luxury. Some of those in the upper regions have been fortunate enough to ease their way into the upper echelons. Some of those who were on the border of the low".

Without doing research in order to proffer an answer to the question, I responded by informing via historical definitions and paradigms. "Upper middle" and "lower middle" were terms used to allow the scale to be a five-part measurement, not three. Those terms allowed recognition of those who had escaped the [continue reading]