Just what is the modern definition of “middle class?”

When I grew up, being “middle class” was based much more on one’s personal behavior, one’s moral and ethical values and behavior, one’s manner of non-abusive and non-intrusive speech, one’s attitude towards education, one’s work ethic, one’s respect for the basic humanity of other person’s, an obligation to help others less fortunate than one’s self, an educated knowledge of and respect for the history and traditions of American society, etc.

It was not based first upon one’s income. 

In fact, a moderately/poorly paid librarian at the town library might have been considered middle class while of man coarse behavior who earned five times as much as the librarian would not have been considered middle class.

Today’s defintion of a middle class person as being within a certain income bracket is symptomatic of the cultural erosion of our society.

But I know what what middle class used to be and still should be and when I see a person of coarse behavior with an income that places him/her in the ‘modern middle class,’ I do not consider that person to be middle class. 

He/she is just a coarse person who has passed an arbitrary economic threshold.

You can’t ‘buy’ class.

With all due respect, AnglicanFirst, that would mean that “lower class” and “upper class” are also descriptive of behavior and manners, which isn’t necessarily true at all. I’ve never heard of “middle class” not referring to earnings and material lifestyle and I don’t think I’m alone in that. Your description isn’t the common understanding of the term.

Well Teatime, my statement speaks for itself and I stand by it.

You see, it sort of
“If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck” type of thing. 

I know how a duck behaves.

#2, agree - not the common understanding - nor a definition that allows for useful measurement.
#1, would you have found it more agreeable if the article had used “people of moderate income”?  How about “people with incomes that are between people with little incomes and people with big incomes”?  Sorry for being facetious (I know I really shouldn’t be), but I can’t understand your objection to the article.

Reply to Deep Freeze (#4.).

My objection is to the purely economic usage of the label “middle class.”

Where I grew up and among my people, “middle class” had a connotation that minimized a person’s material status and maximized a person’s ‘good breeding.’

As an aside, my sense of the causations of our economic problems from the rich to the poor in our country is that they stem from a loss among our countrymen of of the ‘knowledge of’ and the ‘practice of’ ‘middle class values and traditions.’

Synonyms to the label “middle class” as I am accustomed to its usage might be “gently bred’ or ‘gentlemanly in demeanor and action,’ etc.

If more people were truly “middle class” across the income spectrum, then the selfishness of both the rich and the poor that has led to our current economic mess could have been avoided.

We are a country of wealthy people with apparently little concern for the impact of their economic decisions and a nation of non-taxpaying poor people who seem quite content to let others work hard to support their systemic laziness.

The only people who seem to understand the lack of a “middle class” culture that has led to this predicament are people who are “middle class” in their ethos whether they are poor, in the middle or on top of the pile economically.

really… this is what we are discussing.. the definition of middle class… not the article ...

Reply to stevejax (#6.).

Did you read the title?
“Middle Class is Being Badly Squeezed in this Economy”
So, included in the title are “Middle Class” and “this Economy.”
I don’t understand your question.  If we are discussing something about something called “middle class” then a discussion of what I see as a ‘loose’ application of the label “middle class” is adefinitely apropriate.

I agree with Anglican First, although my understanding is that members of the press generally use the term “middle class” to refer to the middle three quintiles of income. 
On the one hand, AnglicanFirst’s definition makes it hard to say, objectively, whether a particular person is “middle class” or not (it’s more, “I know it when I see it”); but on the other hand, I think many people share this definition—and that is why the vast majority of Americans, if asked, would say that they are middle class—even if their income places them well into the top or bottom 20% of incomes.

stevejax, it’s rather difficult to discuss an article when the crux and subject of it is apparently defined in different ways!

AnglicanFirst, well, if manners and breeding define middle class, then it seems to me what you’re ascribing to the “middle class” is actually how the vast majority of people would describe the upper class. Particularly this:
Synonyms to the label “middle class” as I am accustomed to its usage might be “gently bred’ or ‘gentlemanly in demeanor and action,’ etc.
What on Earth does “gently bred” mean, btw? Sounds like something they’d say ironically even in “Gone with the Wind,” lol.

I like words, and precise definitions, but I suspect that 99% of people wouldn’t have difficulty understanding the intended usage of the term “middle class” in the article.  Maybe I grew in a different place, but, in my 52 years, I always recall “middle class” predominantly being applied in the economic sense that USA Today uses it.  I agree that someone from the lower class can still be “classy” (or have class) while someone from the upper class may have no class.

Deep Freeze (#10.) said:
” I agree that someone from the lower class can still be “classy” (or have class) while someone from the upper class may have no class.”

Maybe its a regional thing or maybe its just a reflection of the cultural values of my mother’s and my father’s family cultures and the environment in which I was raised.

My father’s family is descended from a Jacobite planter who settled in Maryland in 1637 as a Catholic refugee and who worked for Lord Calvert (Lord Baltimore) in that colony.  That ancestor’s descendants were successful farmers and well read people over the generations upto and including my father’s generation.  They worked hard and they took a personal pride in self-improvement and the education of their children.  They gave more back to their communities than they took from them.

My mother’s relatives were early pioneering Canadians from eastern Ontario, Canada.  They emigrated to Canada from families that were energetic and self-sustaining in the ‘old country,’ primarily Scotland, and their children, for the most part, went on to be successful citizens who also returned more to society than they took from it.

This family background and the people of the small Upstate New York village in which I was raised shaped the cultural aspects of my societal perceptions and attitudes.

So, Deep Freeze, when you say “class” I say “middle class.”  And by “middle class” I mean people who strive to return more to society than they have taken from society.

Those who are well-to-do and take ‘more’ from society than they return to society, generally are those who have been very successful and who feel little or no obligation to share some of their success (not necessarily money) with the less successful.  They are ‘free-loaders’ who have no “class” and probably could care less about that fact.  These people are ‘free-loaders.’

Those in the lower range of the income spectrum who do not or will not take advantage of the opportunities for self improvement available to them in our society,  but instead have become comfortably accustomed to accepting ‘hand outs’ from that part of society that works hard for a living are also are ‘free-loaders’ who have no “class.” 

And they also have no snese of self-pride except for agressive reactions when they are ‘called out’ as being ‘low class.’