That's a fine definition, but puts middle class in at least the top 10%, if not comfortably the top 1%, by wealth and income. My question was whether we have d

That's a fine definition, but puts middle class in at least the top 10%, if not comfortably the top 1%, by wealth and income. My question was whether we have different definitions of poor - if you are distinguishing poor as everyone below middle class, and this is your definition of middle class, then you're simply claiming that everyone is poor. Saying "poor people do X" now just boils down to "some people do X" [for example, the claim that poor people buy $1000 retail iPhones]. To me, that's not a very useful or interesting definition for this purpose.