Huh? That's entirely incorrect. There's definitely a middle class that isn't working paycheck to paycheck but can't afford million dollar homes, vacas and college for their kids.
We are, I earn significantly more than my partner who has a degree and I don't have a degree.
It's one of the last fields that without a degree you can still earn a good living if you can break into it somehow (in my case it was side gigs/contracting to crappy full time position to none-crappy full time position to decent full time position).
Though I'm in the UK, I gather the degree requirement is a harder line in the US, also worth noting that by and large university education has had no correlation with programmer ability (in business settings) in my experience, I've met good/bad with degree/without degree.
Interestingly the one correlation I have observed is how fascinating people find the field when they are children, young geeks become older geeks.
On an unrelated note, this is why I think the programs that encourage young girls to get into computing/programming are the ones with the best likely RoI in terms of re-balancing the field.