While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.

There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent.

Precariousness is not just a working-class thing.

Like politics, all status is ultimately local - people compare themselves to those they live near.

Americans overall may live better than medieval aristocrats could dream of, but that means nothing when oligarchs live in the neighborhood next door, flaunting their luxurious homes and top-quality private schools.

Going in and out of a proverbial 'poor door' - a separate entrance for income-restricted residents of mixed-income housing - of your city every day has its costs, even if the 'poor door' woman would be considered affluent in another location.

Essentially, if you are surrounded by those who 'outrank' you, it is likely to affect your identity in insidious ways.

Brand loyalty starts in the cradle and ends in the grave, as I wrote in my first book, 'Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers.'

The increasingly progressive messages in marketing campaigns are clearly a mercenary attempt to entice millennials: they are trying to be 'woke.'