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You are worried about the same things, just to different degrees. Both of you depend on selling your time and skills for a paycheck.

A hot dog vendor might make less than you do, but their income depends on leveraging their assets and selling a product. The hot dog vendor is middle class, you are working class. Income isn't really part of the equation.

Of course, that's the strict traditional definition of middle class. Maybe that has changed.

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A person who can live off their assets is worried about the same things as well, just to a lesser degree. It's possible to have sufficient assets to live off only to see a market, or an industry, etc. collapse, leaving you with insufficient assets. If you're a billionaire, that's pretty unlikely, but if you're just on the other side of "upper class" it's entirely possible.

Upper class people are also by and large selling their time and skills. Some of them are sitting idly, but most of them are engaged in some sort of job, whether that's a high-ranking executive position, or managing their own companies, etc.

"Middle class" cannot simply mean "works for wages", because that includes the entire working class. "Middle class" is meaningless if it's not more specific.

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