Maybe we should stop talking about the middle class.

The wonderful <a title="Joe Bageant" href="http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/01/bass-boats-and-queer-marriage.html" target="_self">Joe Bageant</a>, author of "Deer Hunting With Jesus," says there really isn't any such thing. If you remove people who aren't participating in the workforce -- the unemployed and the retired -- there are really only two classes.

There are the people who write the paychecks and the people who receive them.

There are certainly some people who receive paychecks -- pro athletes, etc. -- who have a lot more money than some of the small businessmen who write them, but for the most part, you're either your own boss or you aren't. You either have to do what someone else says or you don't.

Let's call them the ruling class and the working class.

As a journalist, I worked for other people for nearly 30 years. I had some of the most wonderful bosses I could have imagined and some of the most terrible. My last boss -- the only one in my career who ever fired me -- was the only one I actually think might have been a borderline psychopath. It shouldn't be any big surprise that he is doing very well in our economy, an economy former French President Jacques Chirac actually referred to as "<em>capitalisme sauvage</em>."

I don't think I need to translate that one for you.

<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Slide3.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-237" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Slide3.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="180" /></a>I haven't made 5 cents in the last two years -- I'm writing a book that I hope will sell -- but I'm my own boss and my stress levels are so much lower than they were that it's difficult to imagine. Just not having to look at my former boss's face every day was probably worth 20 blood pressure points to me.

Did you know that in 1789, when our country adopted its Constitution, 95 percent of American men were their own bosses? Most of them were farmers or artisans, and everything was on a much smaller scale, but it sounds absolutely wonderful. That's pretty much the way things were until the Industrial Revolution, which was when we also stopped educating people to think and started teaching them to follow orders.

Imagine a country in which people worked for themselves and the only stresses they had were of their own creation. Of course it's impossible in a country of 308 million people, just as it's impossible for everyone in the country to decide at the same time to eat healthy and shop only at organic food stores.

We can only accept a small percentage of people choosing to be independent at any one time, and it's a lot easier for folks like me to stay at home when we weren't the primary breadwinner in our family in the first place.

But yes, it is truly wonderful to know I never have to work for a paycheck ever again -- unless I choose to.