The right and the middle classes

A ghost is haunting Europe: the ghost of the middle class. Unlike Marx’s ghost of communism, this one is extremely difficult to define, the commentary begins.

The middle classes are not a single economic bloc. They include people as different from one another as a doctor, a tavern owner living from tourism on an island, a farmer, a public employee and a member of the armed forces. Their differences are too broad to identify them by income alone.

What connects them is a shared position between hardship and extreme wealth. They have reached a degree of prosperity and acquired some property, yet remain conscious that they stand in the middle of the chain between the summit of Olympus and the earth, in Homer’s image of a struggle pulling in opposite directions.

The middle classes also depend on public institutions in ways the very rich and the destitute do not. They need the police for protection, while the wealthy can afford private security and the poor have little to lose. In Greece, however, life is expensive for them because they constantly confront their limits in education, healthcare and, above all, taxation.

Taxes are a contract between citizens and the state, the article argues. If the state does not provide what citizens pay for, they will inevitably try not to pay. That helps explain the belief that the middle classes, particularly those who are economically productive, are carrying the heaviest burden.