After 1868, when Japan opened to Western influence, actors strove to heighten the reputation of Kabuki among the upper classes and to adapt the traditional styles to modern tastes.

UNESCO: Intangible Cultural Heritage

This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.

BBC: The myth of the eight-hour sleep

The reform process is already under way among the urbanized upper classes.

WSJ: India Needs a Sexual Revolution

These then morphed into "banks for bankers" - clearing houses which would mop up liquidity among the middle and upper classes and spread it through the private banking system (in the lobby of the Bank of England there is a nice painting of the English bourgeoisie queuing up at Threadneedle Street on Dividend Day by George Elgar Hicks).

BBC: Central banks are part of the state

Hence his venomous anger at postwar England's "sycophantic, phlegmatic and pusillanimous" upper middle classes, among whom the right accent was far more valuable than a high IQ.

WSJ: Look Back in Anger | Still Angry After All These Years | Theater Review by Terry Teachout

Corruption may have left some in Brazil's middle and upper classes disillusioned with President Lula, but among the country's estimated 38 million poor people it seems an abstraction not worth contemplating.

NPR: Lula Enjoys Healthy Lead in Brazil Presidential Race