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Who pays for the rest of the food? Middle class pays about half the taxes (bottom 50% pays pretty much nothing or less) - with the other half being paid by the rich, the proverbial 1% so to say. They get the power for their half. Middle class gets bupkis. That's something to think about if you want to properly feel like a shmuck.
The 1% don't get power; maybe the 0.01%.
Populist politics, very much including MAGA, is driven by the perception that the middle 19% (or 19.99% in your formulation) are gaining power at the expense of the bottom 80%. [The 19% is personified here by HR professionals, corporate middle managers, teachers, doctors etc.] The elite that modern right-populists are attacking pretty explicitly includes anyone with a degree from a selective university, and doesn't appear to include hereditary billionaire real estate magnates.
Attempts by the 19.99% to enlist the 80% in solidarity against the 0.01% are the least effective political appeals going. Although the 80% include a lot of idiots, I expect they are accurately recognising the boot on their necks.
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Back during the neoliberalization of the 90's, it was said that one of the results would be more wealth to the upper middle-class professionals and less wealth to hoi polloi. But they justified this on the basis that there would be greater absolute wealth to tax, and thus more government largesse to go around. So the upper middle class could be said to benefit from favorable economic policies, with taxes being a way to partially redistribute some of these uneven benefits.
And ultimately, all economic outcomes are contingent on government policies, so I don't see why policies which directly affect market regulation and such should be treated as special compared to policies regarding taxes and social programs.
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