Are you a member of the middle class?
Whats your opinion of where the separation between upper class and lower class lies?
This is not a political thread but none of the candidates mentioned lower class Americans
which makes me wonder just where middle class America is.
Dad,after he retired, told me that he thought he had made it to the middle class but he found out he was not.
I’m not even close.
I had started a similar thread on “classes” awhile ago. The general consensus seemed to be that the boundaries are pretty fuzzy, but there are some things that tend to consistantly identify class. Typically, attitude, expectations and values are as relevant in identiying class as actual income or wealth. Perhaps more so.
“Middle class” can typically characterized as somewhere between “rich” and “poor” (duh). So how poor is poor and how rich is rich?
IMHO, Middle class can be identified by the following:
-College educated
-Usually owns home, usually in the suburbs
-Modest cars
-reasonible amount of gadgets - TVs, radios, computers
-family income in the range of 40-200k a year
-Shops at the mall - Gap, Express, etc
-Job is primary source of income
Generally you are “poor” if
-You have no expectations to go to any college
-You are in debt or living paycheck to paycheck
-Can’t afford basic services at times - heat, phone, cable
-Wear excessive amounts of hand me down or goodwill clothing
-You are in a low paying dead end job
Generally “rich” can be considered
-Net worth over $2M or income greater than $200k a year
-Owning businesses or rental properties
-Multiple sources of significant income
While there might be a definate upper/middle/lower class break objectively, it’s a part of modern American culture that if you ask almost anybody except, say, Bill Gates and the guy who sleeps on the steam vent, what class they are, they’ll say they’re “middle class”. Six cars up on blocks in the yard or six kids in the Ivy League, it’s all “middle class” - nobody wants to admit to being rich or poor here. We’ll cop to “upper middle” or “lower middle” if necessary, but the vast majority of people would call themselves some sort of middle class.
[Judge Whitey]
This reminds me of a joke I heard about stupid upper-middle class people.
[/JW]
As Msmith showed, alot of people think middle class is a huge income range. I have heard 25-80k household income, which is probably about 60% of households.
Middle class is probably a little above working poor, but not by much IMO (Meaning that 20k household may be working poor but 28k may be middle class in the midwest). Two people who live together where one makes $17/hr and the other makes $10/hr have a combined income of $56,000 a year, and these incomes can be had with no college, technical degrees or associate degrees. I would say the cutoff is around 30k for household income. The upper limit is around 90k, unless you live in a large city where in order to get your own apartment you need 3k+ for rent, then the cutoff is probably around 130k-ish.
And I don’t know if you can use education to seperate the classes. Comparing no college, technical degree, associates, bachelors, masters and doctorate, it is hard to determine the income of each. Getting a technicial degree to qualify as a plumber and then working for a labor union probably pays more than a Masters in physics. I knew a guy who made 40k as a security guard for a labor untion.
There are also the cultural distinctions between ‘classes’ and I think these are clearer. As a stereotype the lower class enjoy bowling, WWF and drive 15 year old rust buckets, the middle class enjoy cable TV and drive <5 year old name brand cars and the upper class enjoy champagne, yachting and drive luxury autos. But these stereotypes aren’t true either.
So to answer your question, I don’t know. There is not clear distinction, just a vague one. I would say culturally and economically there is a distinction between the poor, working poor, middle class, professional class and upper class. But what seperates the middle class is just a stereotype with tons of exceptions. Overall I would say the middle class is generally represented by some higher education (associates degree at minimum), a household income that allows for 2 cars, health insurance and a mortgage without too much financial strain.
I am no sort of middle class. In order to be middle class I’d need:
Either a full-time job or one that pays more than minimum wage
Houseing I can count on being in more than month-to-month
A car or at the least a bus pass
The ability to walk into a supermarket and buy enough food for the week
Access to clothes that arn’t from a thrift store
I’ve got a long ways to go, despite a college education.
I’m RICH biatch!!!
Education is usefull for defining class because it does have such a profound socializing aspect to it. It exposes you to certain networks and gives you certain shared experiences that help to define your class attitude.
The problem here is that “middle class” is more a value statement than a measure of prosperity. Folks who are “middle class” are not out-of-touch with Americans; and yet, many folks take this to mean that someone making $125,000 can still be middle class. And I suppose they’re right.
But let’s look at this objectively: someone making $125,000 is in the top five percent of income earners in the US. How, by any quantitative measure, can one put the top 5% of income earners possibly be part of the middle?
Simple. Someone making $125,000 (or $150,000 or $200,000) is still restrained in what they can do. They probably still have a job they have to go to. THey probably still have a mortgage on their home. They could have a car payment each month as well.
All of those things are similar to someone making $50,000 a year, except that the total debt is probably higher for the higher income earner.
The woes of daily life remain the same.
I imagine that Donald Trump (for instance), doesn’t negotiate a better mortgate rate for his appartment. (If it even has a mortgage, I’m sure he has an accountant to do that sort of thing for him.)
True. I think middle class is just a cultural and value term. As long as a person doesn’t show off their wealth they can still be considered middle class. And some people are considered upper class more by prestige than income. A physician who pays tons in malpractice insurance and only takes home 35k a year after insurance and taxes is still considered upper class while an oil rig worker who makes 80k a year is considered working class.
But that’s a valueless measure, “being restrained in what one can do.” In high schoool, I dated a girl whose father earned on the order of $400,000 to $500,000 per year, and still felt constrained to keep up on the mortgage of his $2 million house, his payment on his 7-series BMW, and maintain his condo in Sun Valley, Idaho. Further, remember the wife of the Enron guy who complained that they had “lost almost everything,” despite the fact that they had millions in the bank? She was distraught that she had to move into a house that was worth something like 5 percent of her former mansion.
I’m willing to say that I, as someone who is probably in the top 10 percent of income earners right now, have it pretty damn good. About six years ago, I was probably somewhere in the 70th to 60th percentile of income. My mortgage payment now is more than my total pre-tax pay then. Every once in a while, I make a credit card payment that is larger than my total biweekly take-home pay. How can I possibly still be considered middle class? The real message here is that basically all Americans – with the exception of a tiny, tiny fraction, WANT to be considered middle class.
The only measure that seems to make any sense are my aspirations and values, as opposed to my income. I own house, a car, and a TV. It could well be that the majority of Americans also have a house, a car, and a TV. But the fact is that only one in ten Americans could afford the KIND of house, car, and TV that I have. In the cold reality of mathematics, I don’t see how my possessions, income, or net worth can possibly put me in the middle of America.
Exactly. Its the difference between being ‘rich’ or well off, and being truely wealthy. There IS a distinction between the two, so unless you are going to start breaking things down into subclasses the distinction is this…if a wealthy person has a few bad years running at a deficit, he’s (probably) still got his money. If I have a few bad years running at a deficit, I’m broke…hell, it wouldn’t even take ‘a few years’ for that matter. A really bad year and I’d be wiped out. I suppose for the poor, a really bad month (or even a bad week I suppose) and they would be wiped out as well.
Woohoo! I’m upper class and I didn’t even know it! Wait until I tell the wife…she will be SO surprised! 
I guess this means I get to get into all those exclusive country clubs and such now, ehe?
Fun thing though…I don’t particulary FEEL very rich. Oh, sure…I’m well off. Never have problems with food on the table or heat or other utilities. Have 2 vehicles AND a computer at home. Kids go to public schools though. Hm…and I haven’t lit any of my not so fine not so cuban cigars with any $100’s in ages.
I think msmith537 is as good as any. Obviously Kerry agree’s, no? Wasn’t he going to only increase taxes only on those who made $200k+ if he was elected? I also think education factors in to your ‘class’…its not all about money but about your goals, attitudes…and even the way you speak and write.
-XT
No, you’re professional class. Nice try to line jump though.
msmith537 and his GF make close to 200k a year and he considers himself middle class. But at the same time he is around the top 3-5% of households in regards to income. The phrase middle class starts (to me at least) around 28k household income, which about 70% of households make more than. So saying that the middle class is the top 3-70th percentile doesn’t really make any sense because its not really middle anymore if the top 5% are considering themselves middle. Why aren’t the bottom 30% considered middle class? In theory middle should be in the middle. Unless middle class is just a misnomer that means ‘not dirt poor and not super rich’, which I think alot of people see it as. If we defined ‘poor’ the same way people were considered ‘poor’ in 1920s brooklyn (100 sq ft living space per person, barely any money for food, virtually no medical care, two pairs of clothes) then only 1-3% of americans would be ‘lower class’.
Dude. Yer not the queen of england, no matter how nice your house is. I assume you have to go to work every day, so you’re not independantly wealthy. If you were hit by a bus (god forbid), you’d have a helluva lot of medical payments to make - a year’s income, possibly. The minute something as simple as a car accident can totally change your lifestyle, yer middle class.
Sorry.
Also don’t forget that many people have the trappings, qualifications, and other characteristics of middle-classness suggested by msmith, yet are in a lot of debt, or live paycheck to paycheck.
One’s perception of being middle class is hardly, IMHO, based solely on income. It also includes one’s expectations, education, social circles, perceptions of ability to influence things at what levels and probably a lot of other things I’m forgetting.
With my father’s plan for me being, “I’ll feed you until you’re 18, then beat it,” I fully expected to be financially destitute for a while. And even when I was making $3,000 a year, I still “felt” middle class. I continued to feel as such while I drove a taxicab, washed dishes, drove delivery trucks and pursued several other lower rung occupations.
Another angle from which one might view the situation considers my time as a reactor operator in a chemical plant. I recently calculated that what they paid me, a 21-22 year old with no college, in today’s dollars is ~$54,000. My compadres at the plant could do things like buy a house, and then a boat or a bad-ass pickup truck. But they were almost all guys whose fathers, uncles and brothers worked in the plants, and they generally had no expectations of doing much of anything else. For me it was a stop along the way. And they all considered themselves middle class, AFAICT.
Many years later, many of my friends are over the upper cut-offs I’ve seen posted here, and most are definitely not rich. And they (and I) sure the hell ain’t ruling class. Naw, still middle class.
But how can you compare a household that earns 30k and a household that earns 150k and call them both middle class? that is like saying someone who works full time for $7/hr and someone who lives on the street are both ‘poor’. True they are both poor but the types of poverty are light years away. The 150k households may have good health insurance with a low deductible, 2 cars worth 50k and private school while the 30k house has one 8 year old hyundai, 2500 deductible insurance and takes out PLUS loans for college.
I think middle class is just considered a description for being in between having no money and having way too much money.
I submit class isn’t about money, it’s about how you live your life.
I’m not going to call anybody “lower class” who lives clean, takes care of their kids as best as they can, works, etc. just because they have trouble making ends meet.
Now, if you’re poor and it’s because you pop out a new baby every 18 months, you don’t work and you spend what money you do have on booze, smokes, and lotto tickets, then yes, you’re lower class.
To be fair, I’m sure we’ve all known financially middle & upper class people whose actions would lead you to believe that they’re lower class.
Purely from a financial standpoint, though:
Lower class: can’t make ends meet almost every month without outside intervention (family, friends, selling possessions/plasma, etc.)
Middle class: making ends meet but one big car accident or illness would wipe out your savings and ruin you
Upper class: Enough money to set up your grandchildren for life, whether you have that big car accident or get sick or not.
I think debt is a HUGE factor, too.
If you’re “lower class” financially, but have no debt, you’re doing better than a household that pulls in 75k a year but is 500k in the red. You may have a lot of trouble paying your bills every month, but there’s a lot to be said for living within your means, something almost nobody does these days.
Wesley, I think it possible that the gap between your use of middle class and mine (and others, apparently) could be that you seem to be focussing largely on income, and also seem to be casting an individual’s place in your hierarchy based on their instantaneous income.
What if I made $220K last year and make $5600 this year? Am I demoted? Does it make difference if I consider this year’s downward trend indicative of the future, or see it as a temporary difficulty?
My father was a college professor, a Dean at a liberal arts school (Rice University) for the bulk of his career. He didn’t make much money, but he pursued, and enjoyed, what I’d call an upper middle class existence. With very little money behind it all. When he died, I inherited $22,000 and a watch. You’re probably in for a lot more than that if your chemical reactor operator dad dies when the thing blows.
My mother was an ABD doctoral candidate (start havin’ babies and that ABD begins to loom) who spent many years as an Archeology lecturer at the University of Houston. She now, at 87, lives on a fixed income of ~$20,000 a year. Her townhome is paid for and she still lunches at the Rice Faculty Club and maintains a presence in several cultural organizations (one of her best gigs was when, as supporter of the Houston Grand Opera, she discovered that she could get something like $250 a month for taking in young opera singers in her by then nearly empty 5 bedroom house - she got company and interesting conversation at dinner, while one of my best friends and I discovered cruising mom’s).
On preview, I mostly agree with Abbie Carmichael (in particular, the opening statement).
So, $20,000 a year. Can she be middle class?
Everyone seems to agree that there is no concrete definition of middle class. It is a mixture of income, how you spend the income, and how you act. I don’t think income alone determines class, but I still think that a person doesn’t really qualify as middle class and not lower class until they can afford a car (assuming its the suburbs and they need one), health insurance and help out for college for their kids. If a person can’t afford those things then from an economic standpoint IMO they are not middle class.
Overall I agree with Abbie Carmichael too, especially if the classes have stigmas attached to them. A poor person who likes their job and makes good economic decisions is more respectable than a well off person who pisses money away and makes terrible decisions and hates their job. However even though that person is better off and has a more enviable life that doesn’t change the fact that they are economically on a lower rung.