Or have lower class families been buying plastic to increase the appearance of their quality of life for 6+ generations?
I get that we're going through mega-inflation since covid. Even before that, if you bought whole foods and clothes that aren't plastic (nylon), the ol' paycheck only stretched so far.
I'd really like to pick the brain of a self-aware Boomer and find out how long it's been like this.
Middle-class is tricky as a concept, because it is defined, more or less, as "not". Middle class is not upper, nor lower class. Those two have definitions, it does not. It is simply the remainder, defined as what's left, between the top of the lower class, and the bottom of the upper class.
A lower class person doesn't own their own home. A truism since the feudal era: Barons owned the land, and you effectively rented it, worked on it for taxes and payments. Now, an upper class person is that Baron. They own lots of land, or are suzerain to a particularly valuable plot like a river gate fortress.
The middle class, then... Own something tiny. One bit of land, not many. And not particularly valuable.
Just an example scenario.
Middle Class has always been a nebulous question, because they simply occupy the space between upper lower class, and lower upper class. To someone of lower-lower class, owning ANY house is upper class. The kulaks can vouch for that one! To someone of upper class, they'd pity the person who owns, but also lives in, a singular teensy semi-detached in the middle of nowhere with less square footage than their cottage. Clearly lower-class.
The conceptual space of "owning enough to be not only safe, but comfortable... But simultaneously not owning enough to be opulent or fully secure" certainly still exists. The middle class certainly still exists. But there's an active effort to remove it. The gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" has increased exponentially of late, and that exponential growth means the gap just keeps getting bigger. I'm no commie, I don't think such a gap is fundamentally unlawful, but it would be better, in my opinion, if both sides were growing just one at a slower rate, rather than one stagnating or even contracting, while the other grows exponentially.
Middle class has a house with a yard, enough to have a couple kids and a dog, and a car. Maybe dad worked at a decent job, or maybe he ran a little store.
Bob Belcher would be upper lower class, because he rents but he runs his own business (that's hanging by a shoestring). If he owned the building, he'd be middle class. Fischoeder is lower upper class, he pretty much owns most of the town, but of course the world is full of much bigger financial fish. George Jefferson - upper middle class; owns a couple businesses, and if it were filmed today, that apartment would be a bought condo instead of a rented apartment.
Good comment on the relativity of these concepts. Middle class is always relative to those others.