In a Liberty magazine review of Christopher Hitchens's biography of George Orwell, a paragraph seemed dissonant to me. The term "working class" and the term "middle class" appeared in the same sentences, several sentences in sequence, as the reviewer compared them. (Sorry, Liberty has no web presence so I can't offer a link.)
Perhaps my lack of a formal university education has allowed some misuse of terminology to enter, perhaps not. But to me, the middle class is the working class: people who get out of bed each weekday, pull on clothes that serve to identify a worker's purpose as well as to facilitate that purpose, report for work that is only nominally physically exerting, and come home with only nominal concern that their expenses are being met or they'll be mugged as they enter their homes. They work, at jobs that allow them to live within their means.
So who was the reviewer, or Hitchens, talking about in the term "working class"? To me, most of these people don't work, or many of them don't, because they are recipients of various forms of government charity. Of course there is a class of people who work their tails off, and seem to be slipping backwards into deeper poverty---our Church has connected a few of us with such a family, whom we sponsor, and that's what I've gathered about them. They're "working poor" and they are one doctor bill or uninsured car accident away from not being able to work any more.
What shall we call these people?
The term is "client-class," discovered among the comments to Armed Liberal's post on the Democrat Party's war stance. I'm not using the term here as the commenter, Trent Telenko, did, but who's the master, me or the word?
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