The middle class was once composed of people who worked for private industry and were paid wages that allowed them to purchase mortgages and health care. Back then, it was possible to pay off a mortgage during a single lifetime, resulting in an actual homeowner. If we use that criteria to define the middle class, then it is already as rare and close to extinction as are actual homeowners.
Apparently, the definition of middle class has been altered to include government workers. The government is one of the only employers remaining that pays a living wage and provides health care, and whose services cannot be outsourced. The problem with that is obvious--the parasite has grown larger than the host, and cannot be sustained. Like other useful parasites, this one provides us with justice and educational systems, and I use both of those terms loosely, considering the degree of corruption and inefficiency inherent within them.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a battle of the parasites, the other contender being unions. While they perform the useful function of ensuring safe working conditions and living wages, they too have become corrupt and inefficient.
Both depend for their existences on money taken from people against their wills. In many states, government employees have no choice but to "pay" union dues, whether they wish to belong to the union or not, just as they have no choice about paying taxes.
Like other private sector businesses, the government has begun hiring part-time workers to do full-time jobs to avoid providing benefits, and the unions have done little to nothing to improve the lot of these people. These part-time workers with no benefits are also forced to pay union dues, though they can scarcely afford bus fare to get to work.
Meanwhile, long-time full-time government employees protected by the unions receive all the benefits that the majority of tax-payers cannot afford for themselves. Further, there are no consequences for incompetence
.
I'm not rooting for either side in this battle. I'm rooting for the host, the underdog at death's door, being drained of its lifeblood. I liken the government sector growing larger than the private sector to inflation--printing money to provide the illusion of prosperity. In this case, the government is providing jobs to provide the illusion of a middle class. Both are tactics designed to forestall the host from shaking them off through revolution.