Some might say you have a renting class and a home owning class. And this relates to political discourse in a very real way especially on a local level where property taxes are concerned. I don’t think it’s fair to call the home owning class the “ruling class”. I’ll agree that the middle class is being destroyed, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it never existed. Even what they used to call upper middle class is a thing. These are not CEOs making 30x per OPs 1978 figure. But they make maybe 2x to 4x the average household income. (Think doctors, lawyers, certain types of managers.) their lifestyle will be very different from the renting class.