Although the ongoing decline of the middle class in one part of the planet and its expansion in another attracts our attention, we rarely question the category of “middle class” itself. In this book, anthropologist Hadas Weiss argues that the middle class represents a kind of ideology. Tracing it from its origins to the era of financialization, the author demonstrates the fallacy of the belief that our position in society can improve or worsen only through our ambitious and prudent investments in property and education. Ethnographic evidence from Germany, Israel, the United States and other countries shows how, in private life and in politics, this belief compels us to pursue goals that promote accumulation but also prove self-destructive. The publisher's layout is preserved in PDF A4 format.