Can we stop referring to households making $200 or 300K a year as "middle class"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course I am proud of my achievements. I live a disciplined life of hard work, with long hours and tireless dedication. I pay a huge amount in taxes each year, and the lifestyle I live is not fabulous, just marginally better than the average middle class. Yet at every opportunity, liberal politicians label me as the rich, they claim I don't pay my fair share. They use their position of power to rally the masses against the likes of me in order to advance their agenda. People like you then pile on top telling me how good I have it. Yes, I have it good, but it's not as good as you imagine it. I am more like you than I am like someone in the top 0.5%. We share the same concerns, we have the same need to stay working to support a family.

God, you're ridiculous. You make it sound as soon as if you make a dollar over $250K, you'd have to hand half your income to the IRS. Not to mention your TAXABLE income is always less than your net income. If you make say, $270K, you're not likely to be any more in taxes at all, or if not a pittance. One can debate the merits of raising taxes on very high incomes, but this idea that you'd be significantly impacted in any way is ridiculous.

You are, of course, wrong. Here's a graph of the effective tax rate by income:

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/effective%20tax%20rates%20by%20income%20group%202009.png

Note the drastic increase in taxes as you go from 100k to 500k per year in income. This is because at this income level, you hit the highest percent marginal bracket and deductions start fading away.

So, those of us who make 100K, and bring home 85K according to that chart, should feel bad for those who make 5 X what we do but only bring home about 4.4 times as much as we do?

I know. Pretty laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As a middle class person, here are the luxuries I imagine that you have

I imagine that you own your own home, either a rowhouse in the city or a SFH, and a guaranteed place to park the car within a block or so.

Home ownership is not a luxury. It's common for the middle class lifestyle to own a home, or even a nice home. Your definition of luxury is skewed and irrational.

Anonymous wrote:
I imagine that if you have kids under school age, they have childcare arrangements that you chose carefully, and that if your kid are school age, you felt that you had some degree of choice in where you sent them to school, either because you could afford to live in an area where you liked the private schools, or because you can afford the time and gas to drive them to a charter school in another part of the city, or because you send them to private.

Parents of all economic classes do this for the benefit of their kids. My parents moved us out to the edge of Anne Arundle county so that we could go to a better school. Buying into the best school district you can is not somehow the exclusive luxury of the rich, it's a very middle class thing to do. Sure, I can buy into Langley, someone making $100k/year may not. But FCPS in general is very good and it is arguable whether you get a better education out of Langley.

Anonymous wrote:
I imagine that you drive a car that, most of the time, you can rely on because it runs well, and that if it unexpectedly broke down tomorrow, you'd be able to replace it with something else reliable.

Wait, what? That's a luxury? The average new car in the US is bought for $31,252. You can certainly buy something reliable and runs well with that amount.

Anonymous wrote:
I imagine that if your child, like mine, developed a life threatening medical condition, you wouldn't need to pick up extra hours at work, like I did, to pay for the doctors. In fact you might even take time off to be there to support your child.

Insurance is a luxury? Again, the average middle class family have health insurance.
I'm

Anonymous wrote:
I imagine that you have central air conditioning, and your own washer/dryer, and that if one of these things breaks you call someone to fix it, rather than doing without.

Again, all very middle class things. What the heck.

Anonymous wrote:
I could go on.

What, are you going to next claim that I am rich because I can afford a $20 hair cut?

Anonymous wrote:
Am I really wrong in what I imagine that you have that I don't? Am I really the one who doesn't understand how you live, rather than vice versa?

The things you listed above are all middle class things. They are not exclusively for the upper class or rich/wealthy families.

I am not respon

I am responding to the statement that those who make $250K have "marginally different" lifestyles from those who make $100K, and that I can't possibly imagine your lifestyle. Here I have described a very typical lifestyle of someone with a 100K salary. I also seem to have accurately described your lifestyle. Yet, I'm the one who is deluded.

As far as your "average people have health insurance", most of us have health insurance with deductibles, and co-pays and out of network exclusions that don't cover the doctors with the best success rates.

Yeah, the PP demonstrated her ignorance in that response, even if that wasn't her intention. The issues/choices you outlined are not atypical for a "middle class" family making 80-100k in the DC area. Just because 250k earner who professes to be middle class doesn't have to deal with these problems doesn't make them any less real.

[Anonymous]

because our tax system is progressive the more you make the higher the percentage of taxes that come out. You don't really reap the rewards of a higher income until about 500k.

What nonsense. A $300K family is not really better off than someone making $100K family because of taxes? Seriously?

[Anonymous]

I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

Lol. You pity those who have the balls to call you out for whining how poor you are because you have to pay more taxes? Okaaaay. Are you fishing for reciprocal pity or something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

How can anyone "rationally" argue that being in the top 5% of households makes you MIDDLE class?

[Anonymous]

I make $300K but I don't drive a Ferrari or have a Swiss bank account - therefore I'm middle class.

[Anonymous]

The difficulty here is that most people look to the people a bit above them in income as our reference point and thus feel we are't that well off because we aren't as well off as "them". We don't spend much time looking at the lives of people who are below us in income and thus appreciating what we have that they don't. I'd classify most of my ILs as more working class and all it takes is a weekend visit to them to realize how affluent/upper-whatever-you-want-to-call-it my home (an improved, 2200 sq ft Arlington cape cod) and lifestyle really is. It's all in your perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

There have been multiple people (myself included) that make 200-300kand have expresses that we are not middle class. It is not just those pitiful 95% below you.

Part of it is decision making and ability to delay gratification (or not have bizarre visions of what an income will bring, like a Ferrari at 300k). Chances are if you are unhappy and barely scraping by on that kind of income you are going to struggle at any income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

How can anyone "rationally" argue that being in the top 5% of households makes you MIDDLE class?

The range being discussed is $200k to $300k. Based on 2011 data, it takes 278k to be in the top 5% in the DC area. It should be more by now, but lets stick to that figure. This means most people in that $200k to $300k range is not in the top 5%.

So you premise is wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

Lol. You pity those who have the balls to call you out for whining how poor you are because you have to pay more taxes? Okaaaay. Are you fishing for reciprocal pity or something?

I also pity those who erect straw man arguments to make themselves seem like they won an argument.

I didn't claim to be poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difficulty here is that most people look to the people a bit above them in income as our reference point and thus feel we are't that well off because we aren't as well off as "them". We don't spend much time looking at the lives of people who are below us in income and thus appreciating what we have that they don't. I'd classify most of my ILs as more working class and all it takes is a weekend visit to them to realize how affluent/upper-whatever-you-want-to-call-it my home (an improved, 2200 sq ft Arlington cape cod) and lifestyle really is. It's all in your perspective.

That's not a correct characterization of the sentiments expressed in this thread. We are not saying "look at those making $400k to $500k, they are are so much better off!". We are saying "don't label us as rich or upper class, because our life style is only marginally better than someone making $100k-$200k".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I pitty you guys. We were where you guys are. There was a stage in our life where we made 100k HHI. We walked in your shoes. You haven't walked in ours.

Yet you sit here passing judgement with your ignorance and irrational logic.

There have been multiple people (myself included) that make 200-300kand have expresses that we are not middle class. It is not just those pitiful 95% below you.

Well, you are the minority. Most of us feel our lifestyle is upper middle class. Not upper class and definitely not rich/wealthy. That this is such a popular opinion is why this thread was created in the first place.

Anonymous wrote:
Part of it is decision making and ability to delay gratification (or not have bizarre visions of what an income will bring, like a Ferrari at 300k). Chances are if you are unhappy and barely scraping by on that kind of income you are going to struggle at any income.

You are not paying attention. The bizarre visions are attributed to those who don't know what it's like to make $300k. That's why they label us upper class or rich/wealthy and want us to pay more taxes. Once you make $200k to $300k, you *know* what this income can get you and it is certainly not a Ferrari.

And when did I say I was unhappy with my income or lifestyle? I love it. I am very fortunate to be successful. I worked hard to get to where I am and will continue to work hard to get even better. There's no shame in that and I certainly don't feel bad about it.

[Anonymous]

The only difference between someone making 100k and 300k in the DC area is the size of their house. Everything else is pretty much the same middle class lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only difference between someone making 100k and 300k in the DC area is the size of their house. Everything else is pretty much the same middle class lifestyle.

No it's not. Do you have any common sense at all? I'm done even trying to explain it to you, total waste of time.