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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wealthy in DC today gets = typical middle class life of 30-40 years ago.  [/quote]

Nope, but many of us are aware this is what you tell yourself to justify calling yourself middle class when you are not.

I think part of the problem is that a lot of people grew up being told they were middle class by their parents, who were also not middle class. Like maybe they were for a minute when their parents were really young, but these are people with white collar parents who bought real estate and invested in the stock market in the 80s and now have a lot of money. None of their family is middle class. But they cling to this self perception of being middle class because they remember eating TV dinners when they were 6 and their dad was still a resident, or their parents didn't have real money until they were 14 or 15 and vacations went from road trips to the jersey shore to multi-week European vacations. It's like a weird self-delusion.

Yes there are richer people and those people do NOT send their kids to DCPS. But this idea that you are middle class because you don't own a vacation home in Aspen is freaking weird. Some of you need some perspective.[/quote]

There are relatively few middle class people in DC. We have a ton of rich people and a ton of poor people and not many in the middle. If you live West of the park, and don't live in a tiny apartment, you almost certainly are not middle class. [/quote]

There are plenty of actual middle class people in DC. It's just that people struggle to look past race to see it.

Middle class black and hispanic families (there are tons) are viewed as poor by most white people. But they aren't. I know many such families with HHIs in probably the 90-150k range. Solidly middle class.

Middle class white families are often just assumed to be wealthier than they are, by other white families and by black and hispanic families. But they have similar incomes to the middle class black and hispanic families. I'd say on average the middle class white families probably have a little more money than the middle class black/hispanic families (maybe 130-190k). But, again, solidly middle class.

These are people who, like my family, live in apartments or less expensive housing in neighborhoods far from metro, or east of the river. Some of us were able to purchase real estate (condos or east of the river homes) before rates went up, so we are building wealth, but our homes are not appreciating the way the homes of wealthier people in the area, plus we are dealing with 30 yr mortgages and lower incomes so we pay a larger portion of our incomes to housing. We mostly have cars by necessity (a major difference between us and poor and working class families in DC, many of whom must rely on public transit even from neighborhoods that are poorly served). We take basic vacation, save for college but in a much more modest way than the rest of you, and MUST send our kids to public schools -- there is no other option.

We know we are often invisible to you at school. Either because you misperceive our socioeconomic status (again, assuming if we are black or brown then we must be poorer than we are, and assuming if we are white then we must be richer than we are) or because of that specific kind of situational blindness privileged people have where they only really "see" other privileged people because that is who you consider a peer and therefore the only sort of person you compare yourself to or view yourself in league with.[/quote]

Ok, well, as an empirical matter, DC has a lot of people with very low incomes (one-fifth of the city get food stamps) and a lot of people with very high incomes (we have proportionately the most people in the country with at least $5 million in assets) so our middle class is smaller than what you typically see elsewhere. [/quote]

Uh, if you want to be empirical about it, you are going to have to provide actual numbers because I do not actually believe that DC has a smaller middle class than other cities. I think that's just a self serving argument for people who want the public school system to cater to the needs of poor people and the whims of rich people and ignore everyone in between.[/quote]

Check out the CFO reporting, the biggest tax paying group in terms of N is the second highest tax bracket. The vast majority of the density is over 100k [/quote]

Folks, there is a difference between saying that DC has a smaller middle class than other cities, and saying there are NO middle class people in DC. Also public schools are like the prime place you're going to run into middle class families, because they cannot afford private. 20 years ago, MC people in DC could afford parochial schools, but that's not really true anymore unless you have special circumstances (living in an inherited home, for instance, or on a special parish scholarship).

If your kids are in DC public schools, a lot of the families there are middle class. True middle class, not fake DCUM middle class, but like families with HHIs over 90k but below 200k. If you don't think this is the case, you might want to look at your own biases.[/quote]

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