Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here's what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.
When Caroline Kennedy managed to say 'you know' more than 200 times in an interview with the New York 'Daily News,' and on 130 occasions while talking to 'The New York Times' during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.
There is no such thing as a black middle class.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
We are not going back to the failed policies of the past. We are fighting for the middle class!
We're looking to make sure things are fair, and we're always looking at ways to lower taxes for the middle class and raise them on the wealthiest one per cent.
Progressive policies implemented since the early 1900s launched America into the modern age and created a vibrant middle class.
A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel.
The auto industry is standing today. The middle class is standing today. Ohio is standing today. America is standing strong today.
Through Gateway to Work, we can provide more of the workers our businesses need to thrive, and we can help give more of our families the opportunity to work their way to self-sufficiency and into the middle class.
The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world - to be accepted.
I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls.
For most of the 20th century, we didn't just enjoy economic success in Michigan, we defined it. Our innovators and entrepreneurs created the world's most productive companies, and our unions made sure that productivity led to broad middle class prosperity.
The centerpiece of Obamanomics - raising taxes on high earners and investors and lowering them on the middle class - is attacked by free-marketers for penalizing economic success and possibly further stalling economic growth.
The real people who suffer when business is leaving or not successful are the people in the middle class.
Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
Romney economics would spell disaster for America's middle class. In this economy there are shipbuilders and ship wreckers.
For 25 years, it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California; to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class; to secure opportunity and equality.
My parents were determined to move into the middle class.
The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.
My generation's parents told their children, 'Become an accountant, a lawyer, or an engineer; that will give you a solid foothold in the middle class.' But these jobs are now being sent overseas. So in order to make it today, you have to do work that's hard to outsource, hard to automate.
For globalization to work for America, it must work for working people. We should measure the success of our economy by the breadth of our middle class, and the scope of opportunity offered to the poorest child to climb into that middle class.
This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process.
The bottom line is there are lots of problems that were not created by government. The biggest one is loss of middle class incomes, loss of good-paying jobs which was created by technology and globalization. Above all, when you can move a job to China or India, it reduces wages.
The president's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.
From opposing unfair trade deals to fighting for a fair financial system, Hillary Clinton has shown she puts working families first. She knows as president that her first job will be creating jobs for the middle class. I am proud to endorse her today because I know she will keep Ohio moving forward.
We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class.
If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.
We should not chip away at the protections that have built the largest economy and the largest middle class in the world.
Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
Empowering women in the workforce is a key to growing the economy and having a thriving middle class.
I lived for two years in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity after my parents got divorced and my stepdad couldn't get a job. So I think a lot about families like mine who were middle class and struggled. So that experience really drives my philosophy.
A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.
Moderates shouldn't be nervous about Newt because he has a vision, he's laid it forward. He's fundamentally leading us in the way that middle class Americans want to go.
And in terms of their crown jewel legislative achievement: who knew that when asked, 'will government impose a new federal mandate requiring middle class Americans to buy health insurance whether they can afford it or not?' The answer would be 'Yes we can!'
