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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nothing ordinary about making north of $200K, which puts one in the top 5% of the country.  How is that "middle"?  And please don't say "250K doesn't get you very far in NW DC, Chevy Chase and Bethesda" - [b]living in an expensive area is a choice.[/b]  When I lived in NYC, I remember wealthy professionals in Manhattan saying these incomes are "barely getting by" - as if choosing to live in Manhattan isn't itself a luxury.

http://mic.com/articles/64095/what-we-get-wrong-when-we-define-the-middle-class[/quote]

Sorry OP, unlike you, I would rather live in an expensive area with a short commute so that I can spend time with my family than live in a big cheap house in Haymarket and have to be in the car for four hours a day.  I have a friend who gets home and half the time the nanny has already put her kid to bed.  I'd rather feel middle class where I live now than feel rich but not ever see my kid.  So there you go!  [/quote]

That's not the point.  The point is that you are affluent (more than middle or upper middle class, but less than rich) so you have that choice.  The true middle class does not have the option of buying a home in an area of town where the tear-down properties start at $600K and real houses start at $800K and up.

No one is saying that you haven't made a good choice.  What we're saying is that those who have that choice to make are NOT middle class.  You live like the middle class because you have chosen to spend a significant amount of your income on housing in a premium area, but you are paying the premium leaving you less for other areas of disposable income.[/quote]

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