As I learned the hard way, you probably don't see them because they are too busy working 2-3 jobs making ends meet, or they were forced out of their neighborhoods due to gentrification .
The word middle-class will probably be redefined by economists (or fought over, anyway) this decade. Right now, it seems anybody with a job and an apartment is considered middle-class, regardless of the fact that they could become homeless or dead at the first slip on ice.
Apparently my friends and I all pulling in the ~150k range salaries are also middle class, just, uh, "upper middle class." Doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
These kind of conversations are definitely what make topics like this exasperating in HN, if people have to litigate the meaning of "middle class" from scratch (including requisite visits to the dictionary) it makes talking about complex social issues completely impossible.
Huh? I wasn't litigating. And I merely looked up slang term I hadn't heard before.
But while I'm here ... bourgoisie to me conveys the sense of traditional morals as well. In contrast to the purported morals of the lower and higher classes.
