Reply to 31% of millionaires think they're middle class

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Millionaires ARE muddle class- they’re not poor, and they’re not phenomenally rich either. Up until the 1950s “middle class” meant something very different from “median income”. For most of human history, there were the aristocrats, the poor who worked the land, and a very small educated or tradesman class in the middle.

It’s the “middle class” that doesn’t realize they are actually poor or working class. If you can’t afford property, healthcare, education of some sort, and to not work for some period of your life, you’re not middle class, you’re working class. The fact that you have TVs, cars, and cheap food you bought on credit means nothing, really. [/quote]

middle class has a definition. A monetary one based on X% above the median income in an area considering for household size. 
It's not a feeling. And its not most of these posters.  [/quote]

Yes, that’s the modern definition, and when people came up with it being “middle class” became associated with a certain kind of lifestyle that could be bought with that income. It seems we are reverting to the historical norm now. [/quote]

I read a great deal of 19th century history, particularly British, and in Britain up through the 1960s "middle class" really meant the approx the top 15% of society just underneath the top 1%, and that included everyone from the wealthy upper middle class mill owners to lower middle class shopkeepers. The rest of the 85% were working class to poor. Which is why when the British middle classes were described in manners and lifestyle they always came across as comparable to upper middle class in the United States. Aka "the middle classes with their private schools and clubs and..." so forth.

And it does seem like the modern economy in the US is reverting slowly to this older 19th century European understanding of the class system. Funnily enough, I googled and today a 100k salary puts you in the 86th percentile. For a single it is a salary allowing you to afford a modest property, max your retirement, live decently comfortable, be able to take a trip and splurge every now and then, and still put aside something for rainy days. Which is what people would have thought as middle class. But it's the 86th percentile! And there's a very good argument to be made that this is really the threshold for becoming middle class. [/quote]

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