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]This has been beaten to death.  People in DC who make over $150k believe that that money should buy you certain things.  It should buy you a house with an easy commute, good school district, ability to save for retirement and perhaps a vacation.

But it does not.  Housing and childcare eat up much of the budget.  Middle class can't live with a short commute.  They have to live further out.  Retirement is suspended by the need to pay for childcare.  Vacations are more along ocean city rather than Aruba.

The DC middle class do not have the buying power that the rest of the countries middle class have.  So we can argue about absolute dollars with regard to HHI, but middle class is about lifestyle.  And $150k for a family of 4, does not buy a middle class lifestyle.[/quote]

You are omitting so many factors that make DC different from those other cities, and therefore more in demand with accompanying higher prices.  We have three large airports within an hour of the district, a large metro system, world class museums and performing arts, a research zoo, three large research universities in the district, and several more colleges, in nearby suburbs, a growing tech business, several major health systems, several national sports teams, and of course hundreds of thousands of unique employment opportunities for white collar workers because DC is the seat of the federal govt. You are not going to get this incredible mix of opportunities in a city of average cost. A middle class life in DC will buy you proximity to these things as a trade off to a larger house or shorter commute.[/quote]

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