B.5. Definitional Standard

All discussions of taxation or economic policy by government officials, in official documents, or in legislative proceedings shall use the following definition: the middle class consists of the middle seventy-five percent (75%) of human income earners, as determined by income data from the most recent decennial census.

Politics is rough-and-tumble. Sometimes politicians talk without a factual basis. They call it spin, and say everyone does it. None of that makes it right. Certain terms need to have agreed-upon definitions in policy discussions.

In tax debates, politicians routinely call top earners “middle class.” That’s not a mistake. It’s deliberate deception. It’s designed to mislead voters. And voter opinions and behavior show that it works – for a while.

To avoid these lies, the Charter here demands that, at least for tax policy and economic discussions, the middle class be defined as the middle 75 percent of income earners (specifically, human income earners, not corporations). That means the top and bottom 12.5 percent of earners do not fall into the “middle class.” I would, frankly, prefer the number to be the middle 50 percent of earners, but there are a lot of earners on the top end who would take offense to that characterization. Still, this gives an agreed-upon definition, so that someone making $200,000 per year isn’t characterized as “middle-class.” Depending on where they live, they probably aren’t independently wealthy, but they also don’t really represent middle America.

A careful reader might say, “You just admitted you’d rather use the middle 50% — doesn’t that make your definition dishonest?” No. The point isn’t to rig the numbers for my preference — it’s to make sure we’re all talking about the same group when we say “middle class.”