For those who refer to the "Working Class" as though it were an alien form of life,

[Warpy]

5. As an RN, I had a profession

However, I was not management, had no hiring/firing ability, and punched a time clock.

That put me squarely into the working class, maybe near the top by paycheck, but in there with everybody else who punches a time clock and has little control over the terms of employment.

Most people who call themselves middle class are working class. They have little control over the job and don't earn enough for the trappings of the middle class, like putting the kids through college and being able to save for retirement. It seems they're allergic to the label, like they're better than that, aren't they? Their parents might have been middle class, after all, isn't it inherited? Isn't it attitude or making about what everybody else you know does?

Nope. We've all come down a class or two and it's high time we acknowledged it, whether we like it or not.

I was a member of the working class. I was proud to be so, managing to keep my financial head above water in a time of steeply declining expectations. What has always rankled are those declining expectations amid the country becoming richer than any other on the planet because a small cabal of rich men transferred wealth from workers to themselves over a 40 year period. We know why our expectations are declining and why our kids will do even worse than we did and don't like it a bit.

And therein lies the problem. Some easily led people still stupidly believe in the policies that got us all here, blaming regulations forcing business to stop fouling air and water, schools that don't always teach what they want them to teach, and highways in poor repair costing them car repair bills, like that is the natural state of things.

I'm not sure we can educate people out of this since everything they see or hear in mass media confirms all these silly ideas while letting the real thieves off the hook. However, it is the major challenge we face as Americans and secondarily as Democrats.