The Blueprint Was Always There: What Aristotle Told Us About the Middle Class.
In Politics, one of Aristotle’s many incredible works from Classical Antiquity, an observation was made that has endured through Western Civilization for over two thousand years. Aristotle argued that the health of any republic does not depend on the wealthiest or poorest citizens, but on the strength of the middle class. He stated, “The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control and outnumbers both of the other classes.” He also claimed, “A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.” His warning was just as clear, “When there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.”
He was not romanticizing ideal nations like his mentor Plato, he was making a structural observation about the nature of self-government, that extreme wealth and extreme poverty produce instability.
America understood this not only at its founding, but in recent history. In 1970, the middle class held 62% of aggregate household income in the US, and 61% of Americans lived in middle-income households. It was the broadest, most prosperous middle class that any nation or civilization had ever produced. The postwar economy delivered rising wages, homeownership, and shared growth that allowed ordinary families from Lynn, Massachusetts to Little Rock, Arkansas to build wealth across generations. It was not perfect, and never was, but the direction was clear, that mobility existed for most in America.
That picture has changed significantly, by 2022, the middle-class share of aggregate household income was 43%, while the upper income share rose from 29% to 48% over the same period. The share of Americans living in middle-income households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% today. The median income of middle-class households grew 60% from 1970 to 2022, and for upper-income households median income rose 78% over the same period. Additionally, the middle-class share of total national wealth fell from 32% in 1983 to just 17% by 2016. These are not the numbers of a thriving middle class; they are numbers of a middle class that is being systematically hollowed out.
What makes this difficult to understand is that the erosion is not always visible on paper, median middle-class income has risen in nominal terms, but the costs that define life have risen far faster. From 2020 to 2024, home prices climbed 52% and grocery prices rose 30%. A household earning $100,000 today carries the purchasing power of roughly $80,000 just 5 years ago. Nearly 66% of middle-class Americans in a 2024 survey said that they were struggling financially and did not expect things to improve. This is not merely an economic problem of today, but a republican one in the classical sense of the word.
This weekend, much of the country observes Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, one of the most important events in the history of the world regardless of your faith. The event at its core is one of sacrifice, salvation, and the possibility that what is broken can be restored. Those ideas have shaped far more than just Christianity. They have formed the moral foundation of the American republic and Europe, that individuals possess dignity, that no part of life is fixed, and that effort and participation in civic life carry true meaning. When we speak of restoring the middle class, we are speaking of restoring that belief, that this nation still rewards those who built it.
The answer is not redistribution, or that the market will correct itself without structural reform. It is a return to the conditions that made economic prosperity possible. Aristotle believed that the role of government was not to manage outcomes, but to maintain the conditions for participation and mobility, and that is what must be restored. This means addressing housing supply, reforming and competitively restoring healthcare so that it works for families. It means ensuring taxes and regulation do not penalize income or capital of families trying to build from the ground up at the federal and state levels.
Aristotle’s warning was not written for ancient Greece; it was written for every civilization that came after it. We must listen to the advice of our ancestors and decide what kind of republic we leave behind. One with a broad coalition and a strong middle class, that will be a check against tyranny from any class or faction. That is the country that still rewards those who built it, and it is the one worth preserving.
Pew Research Center The State of the American Middle Class (2024) https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/the-state-of-the-american-middle-class/
Pew Research Center Trends in U.S. Income and Wealth Inequality (2020) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Urban Institute Nine Charts about Wealth Inequality in America https://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/
Congressional Budget Office Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989–2019https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58533
National True Cost of Living Coalition Survey (2024): https://nchstats.com/us-state-income-for-middle-class/
Case-Shiller / BLS CPI Data : https://www.bls.gov/cpi/