Why in the UK do they say middle class to describe what the rest of the world would call upper-middle class?

Because in the UK we have an extra class - the upper class. This is a very unique class - The royal family!

The UK has a higher standard of living than the US.

UK upper classes used to be noble men with ties to royalty or titled people such as Earls Dukes Barons etc. Bieng a successful businesman or merchant would make you middle class.

Well...traditionally in the UK, the term Upper class, the people at the very top of the social strata, would refer to aristocracy, people born with titles etc. Lacking this traditional rigid class structure, America has more of a tradition of social mobility than the UK-the American dream, to make anything of yourself. Being a relatively new country, the US has never had true royalty. So to them, who can truly said to be upper class? UK has a particularly strange obsession with class-for instance, the majority of people must be middle class due to income and education, but virtually everybody you meet claims to have working class roots, as this is perceived to be more of a genuine identity. Hope this all makes sense, Ive only just woke up. Think I need another cup of tea.

This class system is way out of date with the reality of society today. Just think, plumbers who would be known as working class make a heck of a lot more money than your average professional, may well afford to live a more comfortable lifestyle than the rest of us. But do we call them middle class? No, just because they work with their hands.

One of the difficulties in answering this question is an understanding of the word "class". For some this may mean socio-economic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic ) so that governments can define groups of people for the sake of taxation and demographics; and for others it may mean position within a set of cultural mores as defined by Jilly Cooper in Class or Nancy Mitfords U and Non_U and then again something in between. So Class in the Uk is very often defined in governement by socioeconomics but within groups themselves by cultural mores (the way words are pronounced or the way you hold a knife and fork or whther you say living room sitting room or drawing room and so on) This may be in some way a peculiarity of island culture, like the Japanese knowing social status and just how far to bow. Jilly Cooper would probably say this has been slowly eradicated by the "tellystocracy" and is lsowly becoming meaningless but I beleive the myth lives on...because the stories we tell about ourselves eventually define us.

This is not endemic to the UK. It abounds is most countries previously colonised by the British. I always thought (at age10) that farmers were "landed gentry". Imagine my surprise when I first picked up a sociology text (at age 15)and found farmers and agricultural workers were regarded as the lowest class of all

It didn't used to be that easy to become middle class so we don't want to make it too easy to gain admission.

meeeeooooow