… and why is that such a terrible thing?

What suggests it might be terrible? Especially when we are talking about how the middle class, not the working class, is the undesirable option. About how people prefer to be working class – and for good reason. Like I said in another comment,

I’m not sure middle class was ever much of an ideal. It was the outcome of us moving away from the time when most owned farms, with many of them starting to fail as we moved into the industrialization era, and their owners having to pick up jobs off the farm to stay afloat.

As I asked originally: Does the middle class want to exist again? I expect the answer is, for the most part, no.