- published: 12 Nov 2015
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The American middle class is a social class in the United States. While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use, contemporary social scientists have put forward several, more or less congruent, theories on the American middle class. Depending on class model used, the middle class may constitute anywhere from 25% to 66% of households.
One of first major studies of the middle class in America, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, was made by sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1951. Later sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert of Hamilton College commonly divide the middle class into two sub-groups. Constituting roughly 15% to 20% of households is the upper or professional middle class consisting of highly educated, salaried professionals and managers. Constituting roughly one third of households is the lower middle class consisting mostly of semi-professionals, skilled craftsmen and lower level management. Middle class persons commonly have a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy and rely on their expertise to sustain themselves.
The middle class is a class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class. The common measures of what constitutes middle class vary significantly between cultures.
The term "middle class" is first attested in James Bradshaw's 1745 pamphlet Scheme to prevent running Irish Wools to France. The term has had several, sometimes contradictory, meanings. It was once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry of Europe.[by whom?] While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city. Another definition equated the middle class to the original meaning of capitalist: someone with so much capital that they could rival nobles. By this definition, only millionaires and billionaires are middle class in modern times. In fact, to be a capital-owning millionaire was the essential criterion of the middle class in the industrial revolution. In France, the middle classes helped drive the French Revolution.
Elizabeth Warren (born June 22, 1949) is an American bankruptcy law expert, policy advocate, Harvard Law School professor, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2012 United States Senate election in Massachusetts. She has written several academic and popular books concerning the American economy and personal finance. She contributed to the oversight of the 2008 U.S. bailout program, and also led the conception and establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Warren attended The George Washington University and the University of Houston. She received a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1976. Warren taught law at several universities and was listed by the Association of American Law Schools as a minority law professor throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the wake of the U.S. financial crisis, Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under U.S. President Barack Obama.
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