I'm not arguing for social stratification - I'm arguing that the question "are you happy?" carries an implied "compared to what?" with it. Social Studies 101 demonstrates that the larger your middle class, the more "happiness" markers you will see in that society and that the less visible unfairness, the less unrest. Check it - simply making coach passengers walk through first class increases the likelihood of an air rage incident by a factor of four. And let's be honest - "air travel" is an upper-middle class thing to begin with. Those in-flight magazines are not selling to people in lower tax brackets, period.

You can structure a society such that the disadvantaged never meet with the advantaged. That's what we end up with absent external controls. Serfdom and kinghood is our natural state. Market forces predict that. Which is exactly what Kansas and Louisiana demonstrate - when you let the rich dictate where the money goes, the rich get richer and the poor get destitute. THAT'S my point - the barback is more likely to be "happy" these days because the opportunity to be anything but a barback is becoming more and more abstract.

My broader point is that the socialists/liberal democrats have been letting the Republicans and neoconservatives drive the narrative on "taxes" for so long that it's taken as gospel truth that we have always been at war with Eastasia. When your taxes are literally negative and you think you're paying too much, you've been completely indoctrinated into a mindset that touches reality in no places.