The labor aristocracy and the “middle class” exists as a consequence of capitalists paying a portion of workers less than is required for social reproduction (underpricing their labor-power) and then selling these commodities to a group of more well-off workers, pocketing some of the super profits for themselves, but also sacrificing some to reduce the price of their commodities below what would usually be profitable, reducing the cost of consumption for already well-off workers, entrenching them as a middle class whose function is to consume. These people can become, on occasion, so wealthy (for a worker) that they can invest their money and turn it into capital, becoming petite bourgeois. This is the mechanism of increasing wage disparity. It doesn’t even need a conspiracy.

Do they not teach this in college anymore? This was Soc 101 a few decades ago.