There has been a lot of chatter in American politics, particularly in the liberal/progressive world, about income inequality. But defining class in terms of income seems to obscure more than it reveals. Here's a look at some statistics re: the distribution of financial wealth in America, and what that means for the economic and political realities that Americans face.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/...
(can't get the image to work-just click the link).
Look at the pie chart on the right. That's the distribution of America's total financial (non-home) wealth, as of 2010. These are the assets that are more "liquid", and so are more relevant to discussions about who really "owns" America.
The bottom 80% of households-92 million, roughly-hold no more than 5% of all financial wealth in the United States. The top 1% of households-about 1.15 million-hold over 42% of all financial wealth in the U.S. The total financial wealth of the United States is over $52 trillion: the mean/average/per capita financial wealth of the bottom 80% is roughly $28,000, while the average '1%er" has 800 times that $28k.
This means that as many as 80% of all American households basically depend on their labor income for survival. This is the working class, in classical terms. Another 15% of the population is "middle class" in that they have enough financial wealth (assets) to not solely depend on their labor income; however, they still depend on their labor income a great deal.
That leaves about 5% of American households, who are in the upper reaches of that 'middle class", who could be considered as "the rich." Most of these people, however, are still working, even though they also have a lot of investments/capital. Yet a small number of them can live off their investment income/capital assets, without having to "work" in any sense familiar to most people. These are the truly rich, the elite of the elite, the upper class off the upper class.
Kind of looks like a banana republic, when put into these terms...