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Not sure where your drawing your data from the US does have a large working class population and always has had.

Up in the hollers you can still find some very poor working class people and its noticeable that the forces recruit from these populations (this is from conversations with USAF personnel)




So the original proposition was that "America has always been a nation of middle class people, even back in colonial times."

I'm not sure exactly what they meant. i'm not sure if "middle class people" and "working class people" are the same thing. I'm not sure if a "large working class population" contradicts "a nation of middle class people."

I interpreted the original claim as suggesting that the U.S. had _more_ "middle class people" than European nations, and had much much fewer people who were not "middle class people" compared to contemporaneous European (or other) nations. I am not sure how we define "middle class" or compare the U.S. and Europe "even in colonial times". I am sure that enslaved people were not "middle class" though.

But where I found my data that at some points ("colonial times " and shortly after) up to 20% of the entire U.S. population was enslaved people (who were obviously not "middle class" and to me present some serious problems with considering the U.S. at those times "a nation of middle-class people") by googling, and finding this: https://faculty.weber.edu/kmackay/statistics_on_slavery.htm

The last line is total U.S. population. We can see that in 1750, 934,340 (white) + 236,420 (black) = 1,170,760. 236,420 / 1,170,760 == 20.1%. "colonial times". 1790, specifically breaking out free vs enslaved Black people now, also roughly 20% of the total population was enslaved people. The percentage starts to go down after that, by 1860 down to "only" 12%, which is still enough people who are clearly not middle class that I'm not sure I'd want to call it a "nation of middle-class people".




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