I will say that I've been lucky to be afforded some of the opportunities that I've had without a degree. I have at times made quite a decent living. But Danes aren't really bad off in that respect either. It's typical to see them completing high school and university later than other Western countries because they're afforded the ability to take time off (to work or whatever) and still complete their education.
The problem though was something that you mention yourself - the difficulty of obtaining assets. Real estate prices in the Valley right now are through the flippin' roof. Arguably the definition of a middle class is the ability to obtain your own assets.
If you're making a high wage but can't convert that to assets where you live, are you really middle class? If you're making a high salary but spending most (or nearly all) of it on rent and upkeep on debt, I'd argue that you're still working poor; you may be comfortable but you're dependent on a paycheck coming in.
>If you're making a high wage but can't convert that to assets where you live, are you really middle class?
Well, a family of two folks making valley sysadmin/programmer wages is making like $200K/year. Even single-earners in that tax bracket can buy real estate. (during the crash, I know a lot of single people who bought condos.) Real-estate here is not unaffordable for employed Engineers.
I would certainly have a fairly nice place (or several shitty rentals) if I wasn't spending all my money on servers.
But yeah, I agree that if you only have income from labour and don't have any assets, well, you aren't really middle class in a meaningful sense of the word. I'm just saying that it's pretty reasonable for people in my industry to buy real-estate around here. And that's not the only 'means of production' you can buy; that's just the easiest means of production to get loans on. All my money goes to servers (well, I buy servers... I actually spend more money on labour, electricity, and data-center space, but I rent those things, which is a rather different thing.)
Edit: most of my developer friends aren't big spenders; if they don't own a house, they have a thick 401k, and often a stock portfolio outside of that 401K. Most of them have substantial savings. I think it's fair to call them upper-middle class, even if they don't own the house they live in.
(Note, I'm mostly speaking of the previous generation here; the 30+ folks who came of age during the first dot-com.)
The problem though was something that you mention yourself - the difficulty of obtaining assets. Real estate prices in the Valley right now are through the flippin' roof. Arguably the definition of a middle class is the ability to obtain your own assets.
If you're making a high wage but can't convert that to assets where you live, are you really middle class? If you're making a high salary but spending most (or nearly all) of it on rent and upkeep on debt, I'd argue that you're still working poor; you may be comfortable but you're dependent on a paycheck coming in.