While Marxists and others on the Left are correct to point out that many college-educated progressives are themselves part of the working class — even many lawyers and doctors must work for a paycheck to survive, after all — the key to socialist political strategy is uniting the whole working-class around a majoritarian agenda. For a civilizational challenge like shifting away from fossil fuels, only broad-based working-class power is capable of achieving what planetary systems require. To build that power, we need to understand why we are failing to win many workers to our politics, and how we can change that.
The “punk” part ain’t no joke
The term “professional managerial class” is what comes to mind.
It is the group of $40.000-100.000 in annual income. That is 35-75 percentile of income in the US or if you want to the middle class, if you want to call it that. The professional managerial class are university educated, who are somewhat self employed like doctors, lawyers and the like. They are probably above that group.