The Middle Middle

I read somewhere that 90% of Americans consider themselves in the middle class. I wonder how this came about.

Americans don't like to talk about class but most will agree that there is the top 1%, the super rich. Then there is the 15% who are welfare cheats. That adds up to 106%, but there must be a way to make this work. Work, yes. . . .  We dropped the term "working class" decades back because it sounded so Marxist. 

There are too many criteria we could use to define the classes: income, education, diction, piety, speed on foot, etc. In what class would we put someone with a law degree from Yale who sells loosies for a living?  How would we rate a retired chicken sexer who lives under a tree down by the river?  Or an affable President who wears a diaper in the oval office?

I don't know the answers, but I want to suggest that we do have a large working class, and that the interests of that class differ somewhat from those of the shrinking middle class.