“Middle class” isn’t real

There are highly paid proles: labor aristocrats

There are landlords and small business owners: petty bourgeoisie

There are hybrid and border cases: someone who makes 30% of their income passively through investments but the remaining 70% from labor, those who have pensions, or flip homes occasionally, etc.

Liberals love to conflate all three of these into a single “middle class” because it furthers their delusion that class collaboration is sustainable and the natural state of capitalism. It’s not a single class though because the material interests don’t align neatly… what benefits petty bourgeois often damages labor aristocrats (deregulating the environment, for example); and what benefits the labor aristocrats often damages the petty bourgeois (rent caps, free college)