middle classes
Meaning
The middle classes are groups between the working and upper classes, with steady incomes and some wealth. They include professionals, managers, and small business owners, and their size varies by country.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Examples
BRAZILIFICATION:The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes.
Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products.
In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest-usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation-and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes.