Always has been, once politics became a path to economic gains and after the Civil War and the imposition of the individual Income Tax.

Good observation, Dr.

Also, an effect will be to push middle class further into the lower class. Hell, I joke all the time that, at $15/hr, I'm tempted to contact my friend who owns a burger joint to let him know he can keep me on call.

Michael Covel recently commented that they should make it $50/hr. I think he has a great point. I'm all for it. (semi-sarcastic...)

No. But there are more and more people that seem to understand nothing much of individualism and freedom that increasingly fall for class-warfare diagnoses and recommendations.

To flesh out my thought, we hear a lot about "inequality" focused on the very rich and the very poor, as though it's an unfixable condition without government redistribution. The destruction of a "middle class" is given lip service before proceeding down the path of further abuse of that productive range of the economic spectrum. Self-motivated upward mobility isn't part of the statist vision, and efforts to restrict and punish those that make the attempt is characteristic of a totalitarian society. In the eyes of autocrats, upward mobility is a product of gaining the right connections and having the right vision to be awarded permission and favors.