In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.
Candidates don't want to be associated with poor people, people who have jobs or are ugly; they want to be associated with a certain middle class demographic, so as a result they leave those others out completely.
In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.
I didn't come from a trailer park. I grew up middle class and my dad had money and my mom made my lunch. I got a car when I was sixteen. I'm proud of that.
I'm a warrior for the middle class.
I probably don't make as much money as people think I make. I make more than the usual medium household. I'm one of the few middle class actors out there. The microcosm of Hollywood reflects the macrocosm of international finance.
Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.
The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass.
I come from a middle class family, and my parents weren't too supportive of my career choices.
But I don't think the Democratic Party is at eye level with the middle class.
We need a new generation of leaders who will promote policies that will foster economic growth and alleviate the middle class squeeze, defend America's national security against those who threaten our people, reform the culture of Washington, D.C., and reassert the constitutional principles that make our country unique.
The economic recession in America wasn't caused by bad luck; it was caused by bad Republican policies. But the Republican candidates are doubling down on the same flawed policies that led to the loss of 3.6 million jobs in the final months of 2008 and gravely affected middle class families across America.
I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.
Driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake is likely to get you nowhere, but certainly will burn out vital parts of your car. Similarly, cutting taxes on the middle class, but increasing them on the 'rich' is likely to result in an economic burnout.
Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day? Well, that's where all the other jobs that once made us middle class are going, to that same magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel agency jobs vanished, never to return.
Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.
I'm not for the sort of trade deals that hollow out our standards while they hollow out our middle class and middle class wages.
We have a long and proud tradition as a nation of investing in our human capital so that we can build a thriving middle class. You look at the G.I. Bill after the war - it was an investment in our service members who had served this nation with distinction.
I decided to run for Congress to get and keep people in the middle class.
Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.
I want to buy them, because historically these have been great engines of enrichment for the middle class, 'historically' meaning now for a good ten years.
A secure retirement is one of the pillars of middle class life. For all too many Americans, however, that pillar needs more support.
The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.
Minimum wage laws have never worked in terms of having the middle class attain more prosperity.
The Populist Caucus is the only caucus in Congress devoted solely to addressing middle class economic issues. We formed the caucus because the founding members felt like there wasn't enough focus on middle class issues in Washington, and we're going to keep it focused on middle class issues.
I grew up in a middle class English family just outside London. I wasn't surrounded by that speedy city lifestyle, it was a little mellower.
There's a wider agenda that speaks to what the Democratic Party has historically stood for, which are economic rights for those who are struggling in the middle class, concern for the poor, for economic justice for those who are marginalized in our society.
The union movement has been the best middle class job creating program that America has ever had, and it doesn't cost the government a dime.
The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.
We don't want to go back to the same policies and the same practices that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led us to this catastrophe. We have to keep moving forward.
Women leading means that Congress is working to create jobs, make quality child care more affordable and strengthen the middle class because we understand that America grows the economy and opportunity from the middle out, not the top down.
We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.
You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.
I was born in a middle class Muslim family, in a small town called Myonenningh in a northern part of Bangladesh in 1962. My father is a qualified physician; my mother is a housewife. I have two elder brothers and one younger sister. All of them received a liberal education in schools and colleges.
Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.
I believe the benefits of tax reform should flow to those who most need them most - hard-pressed working families struggling to reach or stay in the middle class.