The best Americans are the ones battling to get ahead

Who are the best Americans? Who are the people among us who best exemplify what America was meant to be?

Let me clarify one thing at the beginning. I'm not talking about individuals. If I were, the list would start with my two kids. Both of them are good, caring adults and high achievers who are definitely going to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

That's not what I mean, though, and I'm not going to talk about politics or religion either.

Perhaps the best way of looking at it would be economics. The most simplistic way of dividing people is by quintiles. Those in the bottom 20 percent would be considered poor, 21-40 would be lower middle class, 41-60 would be the true middle class, 61-80 would be upper middle class and 81-100 would be wealthy. That doesn't really work because of the top quintile, which would group people making $75-80,000 a year with billionaires.

That's all right, because those aren't the people we'll be talking about anyway.

No, by numerous measures, the best Americans would be the people in that 21-40 group, the ones we call lower middle class but who are actually working class.

They're the ones who work the hardest just to get by and have less security than almost anyone. They don't get the benefits that go to the people on the bottom, and they don't have the income -- or the good jobs -- that go to the people above them.

When they're active, it's more likely to be in church groups or local charities than in political groups. Most of them would say they don't have time for politics, and it doesn't much matter who's in power because they can't get their attention.

The most surprising thing is that the people in this group donate a higher percentage of their income to charity than any of the others. True, much of it is to churches, but very little is going to donate buildings that will be named after themselves at universities and hospitals.

These are the people who still believe in the American Dream, whether rightly or wrongly. They're still hoping their children will have better lives than they do, and if they buy a few too many lottery tickets, there's nothing wrong with gambling on a short cut.

If there's one thing we need to do in this country, it's to rebuild the idea of upward mobility. We're got far fewer people making the move to the middle class and upward than we used to.

More than anything, that's the real beauty of the way this country once was and the way it needs to be again.