Are You Part Of The Great Middle Class?

[ThomWV]

By income only.

Here are the rules:

Median Household income is $46,300. A household is anything reasonable you say it is, one, two, six people, adults, kids, whatever, I don't care.

If you or you and yours are making something within a couple of thousand of the median either way then you are middle class.

Let's say that Low On Economic Scale is around half that, so if you make $24,000 (give or take) or even less then you are low on the scale.

Let's say that you are Economically Upscale if you make 50% more than the median, lets say something on the order of $80,000 or more.

[MikeyJones]

1. I'm probably in the "lower-middle class" to "middle-middle class" bracket

Although thanks to higher food and energy prices I'm starting to slip like the rest of America. The Bush administration wants to prop up the top 3% of the country(all millionaires) and give the rest of us the collective boot up the ass.

If we don't stop them soon then we'll see our economic vitality and wealth as a nation evaporate overseas as a new upper-class will assume control of our economy and we'll be forced to continue slaving away for 40 years with the illusion that some day it'll all get better when we know it won't.

[mdmc]

2. I call it the working poor ... 25500 in NYS

but lower middle class has a nice ring to it also...

[blondeatlast]

3. Other: Can't answer. By your definition, my family is doing well.

I'd argue that we are just making ends meet, though.

Our home is quite modest as is our transportation. The neighborhood we live in is declining rapidly, but we probably can't move out of it due to housing costs in our area. We have no credit card debt and no money for anything that might be considered a luxury.

[Random_Australian]

4. Well, as an Aussie I can't really answer, but I'll kick this as it does

sound interesting.

I have an idea.

(And there are more reasons why I don't have an option)

[nosillies]

5. I can't vote. We would be considered upscale, but we're definitely

not necessarily "doing well." I'm thankful for the roof over my head, the car that's paid for, and a myriad of other things we're blessed to have, but we're not safe or spoiled by any means.

Right now I'm pregnant and suffering through a Florida summer with no a/c in my car because we can't afford the repairs. Like most families, one unexpected medical bill could spell trouble. Our nonexistent pay raises certainly don't keep up with the uncontrollable increases in our cost of living. I say uncontrollable, because we're not spending money to keep up with the Joneses -- it's cost increases like getting gouged by property taxes and insurance rates, or rising gas and medical costs.

I think "doing well" is relative. Are we doing better than a homeless person or a single mom with a minimum wage job? Hell yes, and you'd never hear me claim otherwise. But I think anyone who loses sleep at night over finances, or puts off paying bills, or skips a doctor visit, and is not overspending on vanity items, cannot be considered to be "doing well."

[nealmhughes]

6. I counted myself as "middle", but one must subtract the incredible

student loans I owe for two masters degrees...

[nevergiveup]

7. Financially I am doing very well

after 30 years struggling to build a small business but just because I am a financially comfortable business person doesn't mean I vote Republican. I am politically very progressive and I'm very angry about this war.

[KurtNYC]

8. A middle income no longer buys a middle class lifestyle

Congress defined middle class as a combined income of $90K+ for a family of four and not a high percentage of Americans exceed that income. I think people's concept of what constitutes a middle class income has not kept pace with the cost of many things. In the 1970s a middle class income might have been $36 - $100K but cars were $6,000, gasoline $1/gallon, a 3-bedroom house $60K. So if cars are $20K+, gas $3/gallon and the house is $350K then a middle class income should be around $90K to $300K.

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.30/19-bankruptcy.html

[kineneb]

9. among the poor

at $14K/year, for two. No hope in sight either, Hubby was turned down for a kidney transplant, so now he is stuck on dialysis for the rest of his life.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. Sending positive thoughts your way.

Something that makes me nuts is the concept that "middle class" is a state of mind somehow. It's not, it's economic.

The idea that the 70th percentile to the 95th percentile of incomes is middle class is laughable. If someone making $100k/year is middle class then so is someone making $15k.

Good luck to you and your family. Perhaps your story will create some introspection in those for whom their mortgage payments, student loans, country club fees and SUV juice cause six-figures to not seem as luxurious as they expected.

[kineneb]

22. no amount of money will buy back health

Without a transplant, kidney patients are dependant for the duration of their lives on dialysis machines. No amount of money can fix Hubby's body up so that he would be healthy again. Some damage is his own fault, but others with the same set of symptoms never develop his particular problems; it is the genetic luck of the draw.

Even if we had started with lots of money, it would soon be depleted by Hubby's medical expenses: his dialysis alone runs to about $33,000 per month. Hence the reason we live at the edge of hunger. But the machine is all that is keeping him alive, since he lost one kidney to cancer and has End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). We are both thankful to the scientists who devised these machines and to the taxpayers for help with funding.

Thank you all for your concern.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

12. What a sobering reality

You made me stop and think and appreciate what I do have. Thank you.

I hope things take a turn for the better for you.

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. Middle income: it's all about the math

If you make $55,000; you're middle income - if you'd consider $34,000 middle income too.
If you make $88,000; you're middle income - if you'd consider $18,000 middle income too.
If you make $100,000; you're middle income - if you'd consider $7000 middle income too.

The first is the middle quintile of US annual gross incomes.
The second is the middle three quintiles of US annual gross incomes.
The third is the 10th through the 90th quintile.

There are just as many poor as there are rich, or else the people in between wouldn't be in the "middle". I don't care where a person lives or any other arbitrary groupings that are used to rationalize a feeling that $250,000 is modest.

Me? I'm on the lower end of the middle quintile, but with a family of five. I think that the middle quintile is middle income.

[Viking12]

13. A generic number fails to take into account regional differences...

...in the cost of living. We make considerably less than the median but are doing pretty well because it doen't cost much to live here and I have a great health insurance package. If I made the same amount, no employer benfits, and lived in an area like San Diego we'd be struggling for sure.

[TahitiNut]

15. "A generic number fails to take into account my mortgage amount..."

Folks say this all the time ... and it's really a red herring. Tell the guy living in rural Michigan, freezing his butt off every winter and living on $25K/year that he should give the fellow a break who lives in Hawaii and 'barely survives' on $50K/year. The fact of the matter is that one's ability to live in a more desirable area is almost as much of a "spending choice" as the size of house, luxury of car, or college tuition. (I had to move back to Michigan from my beloved California - and living there was DEFINITELY a matter of 'economics'.)

[Nikia]

21. I don't know how working class people can afford to live in such places

I live in an area where working class people buy their own homes all the time and have a nice place to live. Those poor people only making $80,000-$100,000/year, can live in huge luxury houses for the alleged price of an average home in some metropolitain areas. If they want to live in something the price of their yearly income, they can get a decent place and spend the extra money on something else.

[Xenotime]

14. We live from check to check thanks to *.

Under Clinton, I used to make so much more money.

[Nikia]

16. We are in the middle category

We would be doing well if my husband could get a job. Things are tough because my husband never learned how to live poor and I don't think that I should completely sacrafice myself. I am not going to pretend that we are poor because I know what it is like to live poor.

[Skidmore]

17. This time last year we were almost there--about $6K short of

$80K. Then I got cancer and followed that by losing my job when we lost the funding for our contract. Now we're below the median. Not able to save much more than $100/mo, but able to live within our means. No debt except for the mortgage. Worried sick though that something else major may happen before I can find work.

[skids]

18. $80k isn't what it used to be.

If you are making under $100k/year as a household, don't get any delusions about being rich or "well off" unless you are totally debt-free and single without children. These days $100K is middle class, and the middle catagory, $46k, is pretty much scraping along to survive, and below that is just ridiculous. Or in other words, there is no more middle class, just people who have been poor for their entire lives, and people who are just starting to get used to it.

[Nikia]

20. We'd be rich if we were making $80,000 per year

All the non debt bills for us can be paid on a quarter of that. Aside from relatively inexpensive items like books or cds or a trip to the movies here and there we have most of what we need or really want. We'd be well off.
Yes, we know people who make less than $100,000 who are well off really. Some of them are debtors, but others are not.

[skids]

25. What I'm saying is that's not "rich."

That's about what middle class was supposed to be, not "rich." It's a common problem people have where they think just because they do not have financial worries, that makes them "rich" -- the problem being they then self-identify that way, when they are in fact not.

"Rich" is not having to work much, and having the financial power to affect discretionary impact on the world (whether you actually do so, or whether instead you choose to screw off and buy really expensive watches instead.) When over 50% of your productive time and money is discretionary, that's probably about the line where "rich" is drawn. Working 40 or even just 30 hours a week and just covering for your own family's needs and saving for retirement is by no stretch of the imagination "rich" it's middle class, and if you aren't doing that much (on track to own home, secure retirement, low debt, kids getting secondary education, fully insured) you aren't middle class either, you are lower class, regardless of what you've been brought up to self-imagine your status to be or how far beyond your means you may be managing to live for now.

It's like the "frog in a boiling pot of water" analogy -- people have been demoted to lower class through a slow attrition process of inflation, ridiculously available debt spending, lower quality products, and an increased demands on their time. They just do not realize it yet, but I assure you, those who are actually "rich" can see it very planely.

[Nikia]

27. I guess it depends on how you think about it

I'll consider being financially secure and being able to buy pretty much anything one wants as rich. I'll consider poor as being financially insecure and barely even being able to buy the necessities and only being able to buy certain groceries that are under $3.00/pound when they are on sale.
Yes, there are the really rich people who you are talking about but I am talking about how normal Americans live their lives. Saying that someone who earns $100,000 per year is not well off is like saying that the valedictorian, who took challenging classes, of a particuliar graduating high school class is not smart or that the conference track sprinting champion isn't a fast runner.

[mp3hound]

30. It might have to do with location.

In my household, annual income upwards of $170k isn't "rich" but it might be considered so in other locations. Here, it's "comfortable".

[mp3hound]

31. delete duplicate as i had an error message. eom

[tech3149]

19. I used to be what you would qualify as upper scale

but dissatisfaction with the business environment and divorce changed all that. I moved back to the home neighborhood for my 80+ parents. I'd go back to work, but there are not many opportunities in the area. If I took any job out of my field, I'd only accept somthing local and would still be low income fodder. On the bright side, I can do fine living below the poverty level of income.

[FILAM23]

23. Using your table

my wife and I are middle class, if you add our adult son then the household is upscale however
he pays only his own phone and college loans. But its not all what you make its
also what you spend. I could afford a $200,000 home I prefer a $35,000 mobile home
I could afford a $27,000 Buick I prefer a $14,000 Saturn..So when people say they can hardly
survive on anything below a $100,000 I laugh.. And there is minimal credit card debt which will
be paid off by end of year

[Jed Dilligan]

24. Two people in CA living on 46k are poor.

They may be middle-class somewhere else, but here they are poor and FEEL it. 80k for two is more like a MC income. Where a bedroom pretty much goes for 500/mo, 46k doesn't go very far. I've been there and I have credit card debt to show for it.

I'm half a couple making about 70 combined--we have one Honda Civic between us, a small two-bedroom apartment, and our vacations are car trips. We would buy a lot of things we need if we could, but we don't have the money so we don't. I'm lucky not to be in the lower category anymore, but I wouldn't consider my lifestyle "upper class."

I hang on here because this is where I grew up.

[TahitiNut]

29. No, not really.

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2055172&mesg_id=2056467

Look ... if I spend most of my income on one thing that's particularly important to me and then wind up having to scrimp on everything else, that DOES NOT mean my income class changed. Living in some of the most popular/attractive areas of the country is, by and large, a choice - just like any other choice of spending. Actually, it's somewhat different in one respect: it's subsidized. Generally speaking, salaries for the exact same jobs are higher in areas of the country with higher "cost of living" (i.e. housing costs). So, the notion that making such a choice in how one spends one's money causes one to become a lower "economic class" is really a fallacy. You see, there are homeless people in California - even in San Francisco within a half mile of the most expensive housing in the country. How can they possibly be in a lower economic class than they already are? Are we to conclude that they'd be in a higher economic class if they were homeless and jobless in Akron, Ohio? Nonsense. They wouldn't be and neither is anyone else.

[Jed Dilligan]

33. Well, until my job moves to Akron

I wonder what I can do to cut out my luxury expenditure?

[TahitiNut]

35. For me, the "luxury" WAS living in Silicon Valley.

For that 15 years, I lived in a 1,000 sq' smaller home and cut down on virtually every other living expense as well. It was worth it - for the weather, the geography, and the people. I had "top down" weather more than 200 days per year and no snow. I could commute to places where people in other parts of the world had to pay thousands to see, and DID. I could go up to the city on a weekend morning, take the cable car to the wharf and have breakfast at the Buena Vista - alongside folks who paid thousands for the chance to do that - something I could do any weekend. Each year, I could go watch the Pebble Beach Pro-Am while family in Michigan was shovelling snow.

It's where the value is. It DOESN'T change the economic class - merely what's paid for.

Hell, some people forego new cars each year or two to have a larger home - and some do the reverse. IT DOES NOT CHANGE THEIR ECONOMIC CLASS.



I STRONGLY encourage anyone who doesn't think it's "worth it" to live in California to GET THE FUCK OUT ... so there's more room for those of us who think it's worth it.
I (LITERALLY) expressed appreciation and gratitude for living there EVERY DAMNED DAY. For 15 years. It got to be a bit of a joke among my long-time friends, some of whom were born there. They knew better than to complain about living there around me.

[Jed Dilligan]

37. I take it you moved here from somewhere else.

I don't think I could make it anywhere else. I'm from here and rely on the network I've built here to make a living. As my experience on this board shows, I don't get along with people from other states that well. Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, okay, but all those low-rent states just have a culture I can't relate to.

I'm not sure what would motivate to move there and very probably take a lower-paying job just in order to spend less absolute dollars on housing. Maybe to prove that I'm not "upper class"? It doesn't really matter to me at all how an amateur internet pollster would categorize me. I know for sure that there is a class distinctly above me where I live, and I'm not invited to their parties.

As far as subsidies go (re your last post)--you have kind of a twisted view of subsidies. The people in California who need more money to get by are actually subsidizing the cheap states with income taxes. Taxes flow into most states, but flow out of California. Maybe if we stopped subsidizing other states we could subsidize our own housing... but hey, that's treason!

I really don't care about golf or the wharf or any such thing... I would appreciate if people stopped viewing my home state as one big amusement park. It would, at least, drive down the rent.

[nosillies]

39. Living in a popular part of the country is quite often not a choice.

Example one is my husband. He works in the hospitality industry running resorts. Resorts are usually in desirable areas. And hospitality is in no way a high paying industry. His salary is in not subsidized -- that's a joke. He would make essentially the same amount no matter where in the US he worked -- and the hospitality industry is not unique in this.

Also, people who are born and raised in an "expensive" area often do not have the choice to move. Moved lately? I have -- four times since 2001, both paid for and not paid for by employers. Moving is an excruciatingly expensive process. Those "just getting by" in an expensive area don't often have the choice to move, either.

[TahitiNut]

40. It may be an economically rational choice, but it's a choice.

It's interesting to me when people claim that a rational choice "isn't a choice" - even though they easily describe the trade-offs. Unless you're locked up, it's a choice. I thought I made it clear that I HAVE moved ... many times ... both as a child and an adult, both paid for and on my own dime. I've lived and worked and paid taxes and voted in California (moved there three times), Washington, New York, Michigan, and Alabama. (Under other circumstances, I've also lived in Texas, Connecticut, France, and Viet Nam.)

Absolutely everything described as trade-offs, and more, are "purchasing/expense decisions." The economic class remains the same - it doesn't change merely because ("poor me!") ______ costs MORE there!

IMHO, the perception of being in some lower economic class is driven in large part by the continuing eradication of the middle class - along with the conspicuous consumption by the affluent that's increasing in our society. When the reality of the erosion of working class income is combined with the shock of confronting the resentment of expectations not met, we become more and more aware of the impoverishment of the "bottom 90%." It has almost nothing to do with region - except that increasingly fascist state economic policies certainly do add to the burden on the working class. (Michigan's income tax is a "flat tax" for example. Appalling!!)

[nosillies]

42. Hey, your subject line is right on -- just about the only rational choice,

but a choice nonetheless.

[haele]

26. Living paycheck to paycheck as working class...

Five/six years ago, what I am making now would have been enough to be considered solidly middle class, almost into upper middle class. I could easily be raising the family, paying a mortgage as well as paying the medical bills we have now, and still have $300 - $500 extra a month to either put in savings, pay an emergancy bill for auto or vet, or take a small 3 day vacation out of town.
Now, I'm actually half a paycheck behind and the bills keep piling up; one little one gets paid off and then we have to do something major like buy new tires, an emergancy room visit, or decent (thrift store) school clothes for the kidlet as she grows out of them.
I miss those days!

Haele

[TahitiNut]

28. I calculated this Lorenz Curve of 2002 Wage & Salary Income a while back.

(Warning: This makes erroneous assumptions.)



While flawed in some of the assumptions regarding the data, it DOES portray the "disappearing" middle class. As a 'rule of thumb,' the wage and salary income of 90% of the working class never rises above the ceiling for OASDI payroll taxes. (One erroneous assumption, however, is that "individual returns" does not mean "individual incomes.") When we can see graphically that only 10% of the working class receives about 35% of the total payroll income and 50% of the working class shares barely more than about 15% of the payroll income, the inequity of payroll income distribution begins to come home. It's not just about the obscene CEO salaries. When we consider "investment" income, the inequities become staggering.

[bobbolink]

32. You left out my category.. does that mean I don't exist?

On disability, $600 a month. Probably not welcome here, right? :)

I think this is one thing that happens in politics..... party activists truly aren't aware that there are people in my situation. So, we aren't included in any of the party plans or activities or politicies. So, why should we vote? Really?

If Low Economic Scale is $24,000, what am I?

[Jcrowley]

34. Or less

If I made $24,000+/year it would feel awkward at this point.

How do these assessments and perceptions stack up with the worldwide figures?

[seabeyond]

36. but you know i seem to remember middle income 43k-120k

just saying

[lumberjack_jeff]

41. No, that's the 50th to the 98th percentile.

The bottom 50% and the top 2% aren't bookends for "the middle"

[Singular73]

38. Well, its actually not far off base....

I moved from NYC making 100+K a year...why?

I couldn't afford a simple house. A simple townhouse, at 300K, was more than I could afford ($2700 mortage, nothing down (first house), wife, kid, etc...)

So I make the same in New Mexico...damn, what a difference.

But at BEST, I'm still lower-middle to middle class here. Everyone has a house like mine out here, which we picked up for about 220K.

We have no debt, besdies the house, and one car we are making payments on (but its in the black)...contribute to 401K, etc.., but I honestly don't understand how most people make it. Admittedly, I'm still *kinda* younger (33), but my wages have totally stagnated over the last 5 years..matter of fact, I'm making the exact same salary I made 5 years ago!

[RebelOne]

43. OK, I'm between low and medium with about $38,000.