🎯🎯🎯, "middle class" is a sociological category that has almost always meant "above average to well above average". At one time, it even included the bourgeoisie themselves who were below the landed, titled nobility. There was a brief period when enough of the working class in the US was prosperous enough to have a feasible "middle class" majority, but it was fleeting for a variety of reasons, most importantly that "middle class" is an inherently unstable position. You either work hard and rise into the elite, or you slip and fall back in with the plebs. Lots of psychosocial analysis can be, and has been done, about how this striver mentality effects what it means to have "middle class" values.

In the US, the purest Capitalist nation on the planet, it's used as a psyop to encourage people to side with Capital as a way of "advancement" (i.e. chucking solidaroty and selling out your friends and family to S T R I V E), and to make small business owners seem like "ordinary people". It also tends to make people docile and atomized because of its fragile nature. The attitude towards job loss illustrates this imo. On a trades job site, you have older guys who teach you "the boss ain't shit" and "don't ever be afraid of losing your job, they need you more than you need them". For the middle class, it's the exact opposite - losing your job is scarier than death, and the boss is to be respected and revered, and you always jump to whatever bullshit they make you do (even if that means moving 1000 miles away as a "company man"), less you lose your spot on the ladder