You just gave me your working class bona fides.

But working class is when you don't own a business, or manage an operation, when you're not self-employed, when you never went to college or owned a house, and where work is not something you choose to do because it is an opportunity, or a stopgap, or training for when you grow up, or a means of self-actualization and career development.

It's something you have to do because you have no other bloody choice, and you know it can end at any moment because someone else who doesn't know you makes a decision you can't begin to comprehend. And if it does end, you will be holding your breath until you can find another grind just like it, and you'll be grateful if you get it.

Don't tell me there is no working class, I ride the bus to work every day, and its full of the working class. So are the neighborhoods where the buses go to pick them up. I'm a geographer and it's my job to map and know the city and I never imagined there were so many and were so crowded. And no, they're not welfare cheats, freeloaders and low-lifes. They are going to work, I can tell by their clothes, some are even carrying their tools; and they ain't going to some air-conditioned cubicle like mine. They work very hard, these are not lazy, shiftless people, they're busting their ass and all they can hope for is to break even, they're treading water. And when I look in their eyes I see fear, pain, defeat, humiliation and infinite soul-killing fatigue. When I dare look in their eyes, that is, because I see anger, too.

And you know what? None of us is immune either, it can happen to nice people like us, too. I see them on the bus as well, the panic in their eyes as they skirt the abyss. There are a lot of nice, ex-middle class people out there who are just running on battery power right now because they lost, or are afraid to lose, their connection to the money machine, all desperately hoping they don't slip over the edge forever. You really need to get out more, TB. I know it's just "anecdotal evidence" to you, but you don't have to look very far or very long to see it. It is everywhere, and you ignore it at your peril.