The word for today is…

proleteriat (noun) –

1 : the laboring class especially : the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live
2 : the lowest social or economic class of a community

Source : Online Etymology Dictionary

Etymology : “the lowest and poorest class,” 1853, from French prolétariat, from Latin proletarius. In political economics, “indigent wage-earners”, “the class of wage-workers dependent on daily or casual employment” from 1856. The Englished form proletary was used 16c.-17c. in the older sense and revived in the modern sense by 1865. The Leninist phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is attested from 1918.

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David is a retired surgeon originally from London who came to New Zealand twenty-seven years ago after being delayed in Singapore for thirteen years on leaving the UK. He was coerced into studying Latin...