Modern Middle Class as we know it today is an aspiration of the nations of the world. To move or keep people at the Middle Class status is a goal of all countries of the world. In other words, all countries of the world, have in their core aim, the establishment and maintenance of their citizens at Middle Class. That is the goal of government. That is the goal of politics, that is the goal of economics, and that is the goal of most people.

This is so because to be Middle Class is to be well off, not poor. To be Middle Class is to have your own good home, to have a good job or to have profitable business, so that you are able to establish a family and be able to raise children, if so you decide to have children and so on.

If you want to press the argument further to be Middle Class is not to be poor. To be poor is to lack, to suffer. In us much as governments are set up to improve the livelihood of people, the concern is how to make people Middle Class, that is how to make sure that people are not poor.

However, there is more to this definition, the definition goes beyond the bread and butter issues. The term Middle Class was originally called the Bourgeoisie. Bourgeoisie Class was not about issues of economics, of being able to put food on the table. It was also about ideas. It was more about ideas than economics. In modern terms, the Bourgeoisie or Middle Class as a concept has its origin back in the 18th century.

Further, the Middle Class also is attributable to that Class of people who are called professionals. That is people who have achieved some higher level of education beginning with a high school certificate, college and university degree. To be Middle Class is a status and is a sighn of the good life. In economic science countries are categories poor, lower Middle Class, Middle Class, upper Middle Class.

I have read a lot of books about the Bourgeoisie and Middle Class but I have found that the masterful historian Eugen Weber has a firm grasp of the concept as it developed in the 18th century until we have it today as the dominant aspiration for living. And so we went through the lectures that Eugen Weber presented while he was professor of History at University of California University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to present you with the most accurate and sound understanding of the background, the history and the essence of the concept of Middle Class or Bourgeoisie as it was called back in history.

One of the factors that makes up the brilliancy of Eugen Weber as a great historian is his power or talent to reduce a mountain of complex data into simple understandable and doing that as a form if a concise crisp sweeping statement of less than five minutes. I have not come across such a weighty historian of depth and gravitas yet very much accessible to the common man and woman.