One of the first major studies of the middle class in America was White Collar: The American Middle Classes, published in 1951 by sociologist C. Wright Mills. Later sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert of Hamilton College commonly divide the middle class into two sub-groups. Constituting roughly 15% to 20% of households is the upper or professional middle class consisting of highly educated, salaried professionals and managers. Constituting roughly one third of households is the lower middle class consisting mostly of semi-professionals, skilled craftsmen and lower-level management.[2][4] Middle-class persons commonly have a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy and rely on their expertise to sustain themselves.[5]
Everyone wants to believe they are middle class…But this eagerness…has led the definition to be stretched like a bungee cord — used to defend/attack/describe everything…The Drum Major Institute…places the range for middle class at individuals making between ,000 and 0,000 a year. Ah yes, there’s a group of people bound to run into each other while house-hunting.
—Dante Chinni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
Stanley Bernard “Stan” Greenberg (born May 10, 1945) is a leading Democratic pollster and political strategist who has advised the campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, as well as hundreds of other candidates and organizations in the United States and around the world, including the former Bundeskanzler (Chancellor of Germany) Gerhard Schröder and the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Michael Häupl and the Austrian SPÖ.
A political scientist who received his Bachelor’s Degree from Miami University and his Ph.D. from Harvard, Greenberg spent a decade teaching at Yale University before becoming a political consultant. His 1985 study of Reagan Democrats in Macomb County, Michigan became a classic of progressive political strategy, and the basis for his continuing argument that Democrats must actively work to present themselves as populists advocating the expansion of opportunity for the middle class. As the pollster for Clinton in 1992, Greenberg was a major figure in the famed campaign “war room” (and hence the documentary film of the same name).
He is the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a polling and consulting firm, and co-founder (with James Carville and Bob Shrum) of Democracy Corps, a non-profit organization which produces left-leaning political strategy. He is married to Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who currently represents Connecticut’s 3rd congressional district. Financial disclosures filed in Congress indicate the couple are multimillionaires. He is a regular contributor with James Carville to the weekly Carville-Greenberg Memo at The National Memo website.
During his work for the Austrian SPÖ Greenberg was heavily criticized and derided by FPÖ leader Jörg Haider.
Greenberg’s current and former corporate clients include British Petroleum, British Airways, Monsanto Company and General Motors.
In May 2010 Greenberg was linked to a controversy involving White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. While Greenberg was consulting for BP, he provided free rent to Emanuel. Greenberg’s efforts “rebranded” BP as a “green company”, which critics deemed “greenwashing.”
Books:
Politics and Poverty: Modernization and Response in Five Poor Neighborhoods (1974)
Race and State in Capitalist Development: South Africa in Comparative Perspective (1980).
Legitimating the Illegitimate: State, Markets, and Resistance in South Africa (1987)
Middle Class Dreams: The Politics and Power of the New American Majority (1995)
The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It (2004) ISBN 0-312-31838-3
Dispatches From The War Room: In The Trenches With Five Extraordinary Leaders (2009) ISBN 0-312-35152-6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Greenberg
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