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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just read all 14 pages. (Isn't that pathetic?) Majority of DCUM has lost touch with reality even in DC. Take a drive down Benning Rd NE or Minnesota Ave (if you know where they are) both in DC. Then come back and tell us that your 200K income is middle class in Washington DC.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

[b]Right... because there are poor people in the area, that means your middle class life style isn't middle class. [/b]

What kind of stupid logic is that?

And why would you +1 that garbage? [/quote]

As some PPs have stated, you may be living a middle class life style but your income is not middle class. [/quote]

I don't get it. What is "middle class" if not a lifestyle? [b]If you live in a modest home and send your kids to public school and drive a Hyundai and save for retirement and college and don't expect to ever live off your "wealth," what are you?[/b] Housing, child care, and student loans eat up an enormous amount of money. I think it's BS to say that someone living in a 4,000 sq. ft new house on two acres outside of Houston and driving two new European cars on a $150K salary is 'middle class' but someone living in a 1,500 sq ft 60-year-old Cape on 1/5 acre in south Arlington and driving two Hondas on $300K is 'upper class.'[/quote]

We're doing this on 90k.  What are you doing wrong?[/quote]

So your mortgage is $4000 with a takehome of $7500 before taxes?  How do you do that on $90k?[/quote]

Different PP here.  The point is that while you live a middle class lifestyle that is only because you have chosen to commit a large part of your income to luxuries.  You can do the same in a house with a $2000 mortgage, but you choose to live in an area where the housing prices are higher, probably because of a strong public school system.  That is a luxury, one that the true middle class cannot afford.  You chose more expensive child care because you had the means to do so, that's a luxury.  Most true middle class cannot afford an expensive nanny or daycare center.  If they don't have extended family to watch their children, they choose a less expensive in-home daycare or perhaps a non-resident nanny/babysitter who they can pay less.  The middle class cannot afford to buy in Arlington, cannot afford daycare centers and make a number of other sacrifices that you don't have to make because you are not middle class.  You may not be rich, but you are affluent, e.g. above upper middle class.  In Arlington, the middle class is around $75K to $150K, so upper middle class is around $125-150K.  You make more money than 95% of the area, so you aren't middle of anything other than middle of the top 10% of annual incomes in your region.  You spend it on luxuries so you don't have as much disposable income, but you still get to spend it on things that the true middle class cannot afford.[/quote]

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