No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.
We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement.
There is greater income inequality in the United States than in any other industrialized country. Yes, the debt is a problem that must be dealt with. To me, however, the disappearing middle class is even worse - bad for our economy and really bad for our democracy.
It is true that rich people can spend more money than middle class people, but there's this upper limit on what we can spend. I drive a very nice car, but it's only one car. I don't own a thousand, even though I earn a thousand times the median wage. I have a few jackets, not a few thousand.
The Corbynista brand of politics representing metropolitan, middle class, pro-open border values is far removed from millions of Labour voters, especially those who voted Leave in the referendum.
The truth is that beginning in the 1970s, the heart of our Democratic party, America's strong striving middle class, began drifting away from us.
Yanukovych has changed everything in Ukrainian jails - real criminals have been released, while representatives of the middle class and politically rebellious free-minded people have filled the prisons.
There's no conscious plan here; my whole life in politics as a state legislator and in Congress has been about strengthening the middle class.
Before there were unions, there was no middle class.
If Jeff Bezos and I had started Amazon.com in a poverty-stricken corner of Africa, there would have been no job creation because there would be no people to buy the stuff from Amazon.com. The difference here is the American middle class, which is by every measure the most extraordinary economic achievement in the history of the world.
We can move America forward with a strong middle class. We can move America forward with a strong Democratic majority in the Senate. And together we can move America forward with Barack Obama in the White House.
Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.
The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.
As the middle class is predated upon with an ever greater malicious intensity, their children stand to lose more and harder than their parents ever did.
I would say I came from upper middle class family.
Opponents of health care reform would take away consumer protections - siding with the insurance industry instead of the middle class. We can't afford that.
I was raised by both parents up to 17. We had a good family. We had a middle class family, good teaching and good surroundings, raised by the church, where I went every week whether I wanted to or not.
I think that a lot of terrorists have been middle class and, more surprisingly, many of them have been people who were not directly affected by the things they're angry about.
Probably because I'm from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don't get too excited with big things.
Our argument is everybody ought to be paying lower rates, and we ought to be focused on growing the economy and rebuilding the middle class.
With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.
In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.
Unions go hand-in-hand with a strong middle class.
When you cut investments in worker training, you're cutting investments in the middle class.
Like a lot of you, I grew up in a family on the ragged edges of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance man. After he had a heart attack, my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house.
I will not stand for any tax increase for middle class or working Americans. There is no way I will support that.
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
That's the underlying tactic of the Obama administration in 2012: push the war on women, the war on the middle class, the war on gay people, and the war on Hispanics, and hope it will carry the day.
And so whether it's failing to move forward on the Dream Act, failing to move forward on putting teachers back to work, failing to do all the things we could do right now to help the economy and middle class, this Congress is just saying no.
Why are we outsourcing millions of high-paying jobs to China and India? Why don't we secure the border and stop the country from being flooded with millions of illegal immigrants? These are important questions on the mind of middle class voters all over America.
From education to broadband, from building roads and bridges to supporting the military, Barack Obama is delivering for North Carolina. And he is delivering for America. A growing middle class is the foundation for a strong America.
Working 40 hours a week used to mean a minimum standard of living and a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder to the middle class.
My parents found good paying jobs, educated me and my brother in wonderful public schools, and entered the middle class.
We are from the very middle class family. We have not come from the English medium school. We came from our regional languages school.
We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years.
I looked at the circus, and I looked at the carnival, at the fun fair. But I looked at sleeping accommodations and decided I was too middle class to put up with that! So then I joined the theater and found I could choose my own bedroom. I loved the atmosphere. I loved that we worked till midnight and didn't start till ten.