Meeting In the Middle Class

I HAVE GROWN QUITE TIRED of hearing about the American middle class, the plight of it, and so forth, ad nauseum. For one thing, it no longer exists, or barely does, so why bother talking about it? Our pandering American politicians love the term "middle class", and they endlessly extol its virtues and express the most profound sorrow at its current, plight, blah blah blah, pandering to voters. and of course, they all have the very best solution to every conceivable middle class American problem. Smart move, really, since most Americans think of themselves as members of the mmiddle class, members, in other words, of some great amorphous, virtuous masss of citizenry to which shockingly few of them actually belong. Rich and poor alike deem themselves to be members of this mythical American class. The truth is, most Americans more properly belong to something which might be termed the "poor working class", because they live paycheck to paycheck, even if the paycheck is decent, which is usually isn't, they have much debt, and little or no savings. Doesn't sound very "middle class", huh? Why don't we start talking about the bottom of the pyramid, which is the poor rather than the middle class, and how to pull it upward to a more middle class level? Do we want to bring down the wealthy to the level of the poor, like socialists, or do we want to elevate the poor to the level of the wealthy, like capitalists? Maybe we could split the difference, and agree to meet in the middle.