the.com/ruling class

means The small group that holds enough political, economic, or institutional power to set the terms everyone else has to live by.

from A straightforward compound: 'ruling,' from Latin regula via Old French 'reule/riuler' (to regulate, govern), and 'class,' from Latin classis, originally a Roman census division used to group citizens by wealth for taxes and military service. The phrase itself solidified in 19th-century political and economic writing, as thinkers analyzing industrial society needed a blunt term for whoever actually held power — nobility, capital owners, or officials — regardless of what the law books called them.