Who is the middle class in America today?

I would almost rather hear another commercial for an ED or RA drug than hear another politician telling me how this or that will help or hurt the "middle class".  Why is it that the benefits or harm going to accrue to the middle class don't ring true to me, when, after all, I always considered myself to be pure unadulterated middle class.

My folks and their folks were from small towns on the Great Plains. My family bought their first house when I was about five, and we had a TV and second car by the time I was ten.  My mom was the housekeeper, I attended public school, belonged to Cub and Boy Scouts, and we always traveled back to the farm in South Dakota on holidays. My dad traveled long and hard selling foodstuffs across a couple of states, often for most of the week.

The AHA moment crystallized for me this morning, I'm more than a little slow.  The reason current political arguments for or about the middle class don't ring true for me is that I AM A REMNANT of what was the "middle class" in America for about 200 years.  The "middle class" politicians talk about today are the people who depend on the intervention, support, coercion, or employment by government to sustain their livelihoods.  I belong to the remnant class.

The REMNANT CLASS is herewith defined:  Those descendants of the farmers, shopkeepers, small business owners and employees who built this country and who are still not dependent on government, unions, or major corporations for the livelihood of themselves or their immediate family. 

I'm afraid there ain't many of us left.

At age 56, I feel like a dinosaur and a relic, living on the fringe of the redefinition of the American Dream. I'm mostly independent but not wealthy, and my libertarian political views are pure anathema to a few of my friends, some of my family, and a lot of my acquaintances.  The plain truth is while 100 years ago most people in America were in my shoes, each decade for last 10 we have become more and more dependent upon government.

Take the names of five couples or ten people you know and run their life situations through these questions to determine their independence from government.  Do they or their immediate families:

• Work for a national or multinational corporation with over 1000 employees?
• Receive a farm subsidy or price support?
• Belong to a union, receive a union pension, or work for a union in a state with compulsory or coercive union laws?
• Receive social security, medicare, or medicaid and depend on it for primary health and welfare?
• Receive unemployment compensation?
• Work for a unit of federal, state, or local government?
• Live in government subsidized housing or receive food stamps?
• Receive subsidized education benefits or government grants?
• Work for a company that provides a substantial portion of it's goods or services to government?
• Work in a heavily regulated industry?

The "middle class" most politicians work so hard to protect today belong to the above groups, who recycle the power and money granted  them through the mill of big government, lobbyists, unions, and NGO's constantly churning out ever more dependence on the protection, special status, tax favor, subsidization, and regulation that only government with it's coercive power can effect. 

We are fast approaching another election when the voters must decide if the current path of policy in this country is helpful or harmful to our future.  Those who enjoyed the luxury of voting single issue politics in the past need to embrace a larger concept this time around.  That concept is personal liberty and it is diametrically opposed to crony capitalism, big government, and forced union membership.

American capitalism, personal liberty and economic freedom will all its faults, has spread justice and wealth across the globe. 

The world cannot afford a Remnant America.