"– from the New Deal policies of the 1930s through other reforms of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, from Social Security to Wall Street regulation to labor rights to the GI Bill to the Interstate Highway System to the space program’s technological advances to Medicare and Medicaid to the minimum wage to civil rights.

Many Americans don’t like to admit it — they prefer to think of their families as reaching the middle class without government help — but the reality is that the Great American Middle Class was a phenomenon made possible by the intervention of the federal government beginning with Franklin Roosevelt and continuing into the 1970s."

Interesting piece on how fucked up Reaganomics was
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/10/17/the-abject-failure-of-reaganomics/

But, yeah, basically the point in this paragraph really applies to Britain too, I reckon. I doubt many in this country could have dragged themselves up to the new middle-class without an institution like the NHS or the welfare state. The nouveau riche likes of CG owe their position to socialism not capitalism.

Sorry: Hmmm, interesting...