Except My Cousin Vinnie

That’s cool, and I’d love to see it. “wage” means hourly payment for time worked. Anything else is a benefit or whatever - but not wage. Wage theft is not getting paid wages due.

Vacation time is not the same as hourly wage.

I don’t think we really disagree here. You’re focusing on what people are. I’m focusing on how they see themselves. They’re not necessarily the same things.

Doesn’t mean you don’t call yourself middle class, because at least you’re not homeless. At the very least, “lower-middle class”

20-something years ago PBS had an excellent documentary called “People Like Us: Social Class in America” to show, well, social class in America. If you can find it, or at least clips of it, I’d recommend it. There was one cutscene with a bunch of people being asked which class they see themselves as, and pretty much everyone felt they were “middle class” - but you could tell by the way they presented themselves (clothes, jewelry, etc) that they were all over the place.

Pretty much everyone calls themselves middle class. Outside of the extremes one would expect, there will always be richer and poorer people among you, meaning you’re in the “middle” - whether you’re struggling to make rent or debating whether or not to go to the vacation home this weekend.

Use it or lose it is very common, even in (US) government employment.

I thought Bernie Sanders from 30 years ago

For what it’s worth, I picked up Radio Australia on shortwave from Denver on a recently-restored tube radio (albeit a higher-end one). It was surprisingly clear too!

Hard bread with hard ingredients (like meat chunks or salami), soft bread with soft ingredients (like egg salad). I’d call a burger medium soft, and ciabatta is too hard for that

His dog is named Scout, and his daily driver car is an International Harvest Scout… Coincidence?