Reply #62: that wiki article starts out by admitting ambiguity [View All]

[hfojvt]

"While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use."

You want to set your own definition as some standard that everybody should accept. I also note that right away they start emphasizing the "UPPER" middle class "Overall, middle class persons, especially upper middle class individuals, are characterized by .."

Nope, the word middle should mean middle even when it is attached to the word class. I know that people who make $100K want to think that they are not rich, because they keep looking up at the people making more or about the same and ignoring the much larger group of people, who seem to be beneath their notice, people who make much less money. As Bender said in the Breakfast Club "You don't know any of my friends, You don't look at any of my friends, and you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends."

Further "taxing the hell" is one hell of a rightwing meme. The tax increases on those poor struggling $80,000 a year households would actually be very small. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/140

"So with a rather modest tax increase of $179 on the upper middle class and $1,339 on the little rich brings in another $30 billion a year. Never mind that it is crazy to ask people making $130,000 to pay another $1200 in taxes. Apparently Democrats now would rather increase taxes on people making less than $20,000 a year and to cut funding from LIHEAP and VAWA, which Obama has done and proposes to do."

I don't think $179 is gonna kill them. Nobody scream very much when my taxes (on my $12,000 income) were increased by $160 in Obama's tax "compromise".