A Middle Class Is a Choice

Traveling through Africa, I have seen wealth and poverty exist side by side. The gap is impossible to ignore. I do not pretend that every country I have visited is the same, or that I can explain another country’s economy after a short visit. But the contrast has made me think about what we are allowing to happen at home.

I worry about an America where there is plenty of wealth, plenty of work, and fewer and fewer people who can build a secure life from that work. A country where the middle class becomes something we talk about in the past tense.

As a business owner, a coach, and a city councilor, I hear a lot about what Americans supposedly don’t need. They don’t need college. They don’t need a higher minimum wage. They don’t need help getting health care or housing. They just need to work harder.

I have employed people for more than thirty years. I know how hard they work. “Work harder” is a convenient answer when you have no intention of changing anything.

Consider education. I have enormous respect for plumbers and welders. We need them, and skilled trades should offer excellent pay and a clear path into the middle class. But it is dishonest to tell working families that college is unnecessary while doing everything you can to give your own children a college education. Young people deserve more good options, including apprenticeships, technical training, community college, and a university degree they can earn without crippling debt.

The economic difference is substantial. Georgetown University researchers estimate median lifetime earnings of $1.6 million for someone with a high school diploma and $2.8 million for someone with a bachelor’s degree. Those are averages across careers, not a promise to any individual. Plenty of tradespeople do well, and a degree at any price is not automatically a good investment. Still, a $1.2 million gap is a strange thing to dismiss when you are advising someone else’s child about their future. 

Now think about illness. What would happen if you missed three months of work? Would you still have a job? Would you still have health insurance? If you owned a small business, could it survive without you? Would your employees have to find other work?

Senator Mitch McConnell was away from the Senate for roughly three months this summer while recovering from a fall and illness. He returned in September. I wish him a full recovery. I also wish every American facing a serious illness had the security to recover without wondering whether they will lose their income, their coverage, or their home. McConnell did provide some updates during his absence, and his office said he continued working with staff. The larger question remains: why is that kind of security so rare for the people Congress represents? 

Health coverage is already expensive even for people who have it through work. In 2025, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family coverage reached $26,993, with workers paying an average of $6,850 toward that premium. Then come deductibles, prescriptions, and the fear that losing a job may also mean losing coverage. 

Housing is another test of whether we mean what we say about the middle class. A person should be able to work, pay their bills, and have a realistic chance of finding a home near their job. We need to build more housing and make it easier to bring homes to market. We also need to care whether the people teaching our children, caring for our parents, and staffing our businesses can afford to live in the communities they serve.

Instead, too many politicians point at immigrants and tell us there is the problem. They point at the person picking vegetables or working in a meat or fish processing plant while saying very little about the wages, housing costs, and health bills squeezing American families. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP. Blaming a worker with little power is easier than confronting the people and policies with a great deal of it. 

I am a Democrat, but I am not interested in giving Democrats a free pass. Both parties have had opportunities to make education more affordable, protect access to health care, raise the floor for workers, and address the housing shortage. I want to know who is willing to do the work now.

People feel the price of groceries and gas every week. They know what comes out of their paycheck and what is left after rent or the mortgage. Telling them the economy is fine will not make their bills smaller. Telling them to blame someone poorer will not help either.

Real change means making the middle class possible again: education and training people can afford, wages that reward work, health care that survives a job loss or an illness, and enough housing for people to build a life. It means judging our leaders by what they make possible for ordinary families, not by how convincingly they explain why those families should expect less.

I have seen what a vast divide between rich and poor looks like. We still have the power to choose a different future for America. But we have to start acting like the middle class matters.