People also use "working-class" to mean someone doing blue-collar labor at a below-middle-class income.
Both views have their merits. A software engineer and a nanny both sell their labor... on the other hand, the fact that the former can employ the latter and the reverse is not true suggests their position is not entirely the same.
Yeah, terms like "middle class" and "professional class" exist for a reason.
If you insist on reducing all of us to only two classes, then working vs owning is one way to do it... but not the only way. One could also divide the "paying" class from the "charity" class, for instance.
And a software engineer at Microsoft with a 401k and a portfolio of stock grants has one foot in the ownership class, even if they still work.
General observation: Anyone who says "there are only two X..." is trying to make you view the world in reductionist terms, and they're choosing the terms to make you focus on the issue that they want you to focus on. But the world has a lot more nuance than that, and some of the other nuances also matter.
Both views have their merits. A software engineer and a nanny both sell their labor... on the other hand, the fact that the former can employ the latter and the reverse is not true suggests their position is not entirely the same.