I've been thinking about how privileged of a life we live, I mean we own/mortgage three properties with >350 acres of land, are never in need for food or clothing, and can purchase items that middle class people of past times could only dream of having, and I assume the majority of people now a day have the ability to do the same. Of course the middle class doesn't have the status that royalty would have in medieval times, but is our quality of life comparable to royalty of medieval times?
I'm not an expert by any means. But I think it's very difficult to make a general comparison here. In terms of material goods even quite poor people might be better off then the nobility of mid evil Europe with things like clean drinking water and indoor plumbing. It might be easier to make a comparison based on the number of people you can order around. But that has problems too, since an office manager's influence is limited to the office itself. Whereas a old style lord had 24/7 authority over you. Even in your own house. I think that middle class people in modern western countries currently live much better then the nobility of the dark ages. Although we have much less influence in our society then they did.