Did you read Robinson Crusoe?

Daniel Defoe wrote about the plight of the middle class back in 1703. (published in 1719)

Daniel Defoe’s father characterizes the “middle state” as the best possible condition for human life — a position “not exposed to the miseries and hardships of the mechanic part of mankind” and “not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind”

The “middle class pays for everyone” message in Robinson Crusoe is the father’s belief that the middle class, by virtue of its balanced position between poverty and wealth, can provide the stability, virtue, and security that benefit society as a whole.

This is the “ideal” social order Defoe presents, even as the story also explores the personal costs of rejecting it.

The novel’s early chapters show Crusoe’s family as part of this middle class, which is presented as the “upper station of low life” — comfortable enough to avoid the drudgery of labor but not so high as to be burdened by ambition or corruption.