... those earning between 70 per cent and 150 per cent of the average income - the standard definition of the middle-class ...

By this definition and the above reasoning, 90% of the German workforce earning €250,000 a year would lower the German middle class to a vanishingly small percentage of the total population thus destroying the German economy.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre