Here’s a riddle: In April, the enterprise payroll provider Dayforce released a report finding that half of full-time workers in the United States can’t cover their basic needs. And yet, in the same news cycle, we saw headlines claiming that more Americans than ever are breaking into the upper middle class.

Both stories are true. Stumped? You’re not alone. What gives? How can so many people be called middle class, and yet so few be able to afford a middle-class life?

If the gospel of realtors is location, location, location, then the gospel of economic policy ought to be definition, definition, definition.

How we define “middle class” determines everything. And right now, the most commonly used definition is woefully out of touch with reality.

Take The Wall Street Journal headline: “More Americans Are Breaking Into the Upper Middle Class.” That claim comes from a recent report by the American Enterprise Institute, which defined upper middle class as earning five to 15 times the federal poverty line.

For example, a family of three earning an annual $400,000 is upper middle class. But so is the same family earning $133,000 a year. A threefold difference, classified the same.

There are a whole host of problems with using income, and income alone, as a class determinant. For starters, how far your money goes depends heavily on where you live. Anyone who’s browsed Zillow........

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