# So if $200 000 - $250 000 is middle income... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 15, 2012, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756 "2012-09-15T03:08:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/41 "2012-09-15T20:22:50Z")
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. You guys had no problem when Obama repeatedly said that he only wanted to tax ‘the rich’, and therefore the cutoff would be anyone making over $250,000. The clear implication there is that people who make less than $250,000 are not part of ‘the rich’. Why wasn’t the left breaking his balls and demanding that people making more than say, $150,000 should also be taxed? They’re also ‘rich’, aren’t they? At worst, Romney is guilty of using imprecise language. He was accepting Obama’s $250,000 cutoff for what makes you ‘rich’. He used the term ‘middle income’ instead of ‘middle class’. These are trivial mistakes, if they’re mistakes at all. But hey, it’s election season, so every little gaffe by Romney will be elevated into a presidency-disqualifying major blunder by the left. Par for the course. That doesn’t mean it’s right. ---
**Author:** ![al27052](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/41988e/32.png) [@al27052](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/al27052)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/42 "2012-09-15T20:36:57Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I think that, for a lot of people who are wealthy but not super-rich (people like **RickJay** ’s friend) the distinction, and their obliviousness about their own wealth and privilege, often boils down to an American (and Canadian) idea of what constitutes the middle class. > > When we’re talking specifically about actual incomes, it’s pretty absurd to claim that someone in the $200-250K range is middle income. Any definition of “middle income” that encompasses people in the top four of five percent of the population is completely useless, or is being used, as it is by Romney, largely as a rhetorical device to push a particular political position. > > But middle class has become, over the decades, a much more nebulous concept. It has stepped outside of its Marxian roots in the industrial bourgeoisie and has become, as much as anything else, about a state of mind, and a feeling of belonging. What a lot of wealthy-but-not-super-rich people see, when they look at America, is not the gulf between them and families getting by on the median income; they see the gulf between them and the people who are up in the top half a percent. > > They see the gulf between people who drive Audis and Infinitis, and people who drive Lamborghinis and Bentleys; between people who vacation at Aspen and people who own a ski lodge at Aspen; between people who fly business class and people who have fractional ownership in private aircraft; between people who have a one-million-dollar house in the suburbs and people who have a four-million-dollar house overlooking the ocean. All of this leads (some of) them to think that they struggle to get by just like the people who truly are in the middle-income bracket. > > Of course, there is one area where these wealthy people do have something of a point. Because many of them are professionals and managers on salary, or small business owners, they actually pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the people below them, due to progressive income tax rates, and they also usually pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the people above them, who benefit from things like the lower tax rate on capital gains, as well other mechanisms for relieving the tax burden on non-salary income. > > I’m not feeling sorry for these folks. I have no problem with the taxes they pay, and wouldn’t mind seeing them increased. But they do bear a disproportionate percentage of the tax burden, especially compared to the truly rich. The main problem is that they often complain more about the people below them than about the people above them on the economic ladder. Let’s draw a distinction between upper-level middle managers and professionals (who work for a larger company) and actual small business owners. Small business owners often pay nothing in income tax, because they know how to use the tax law so well that they can claim every bit of their personal property as a deduction…plus they know other loopholes as well. When I used to work for a car dealership I noticed that small business owners often had a harder time getting a car loan, precisely _because_ the main way they had to prove their income was through Federal income tax returns…and many of them used the loopholes so well that they paid almost nothing in income tax. Some, too, are just flat-out tax cheats. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/43 "2012-09-15T20:39:10Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. You guys had no problem when Obama repeatedly said that he only wanted to tax ‘the rich’, and therefore the cutoff would be anyone making over $250,000. The clear implication there is that people who make less than $250,000 are not part of ‘the rich’. :dubious: Nice excluded middle you got there. So you hold that there are no intermediate levels between “middle class” and “the rich”? No “upper class” or “top ten percent”? Yeah, nice try, gentlemen. Obama’s not the guy who specifically claimed that a $250,000 salary is “middle-income”. Your guy did. Ducking and weaving and blowing smoke to try to argue “oh, but Obama must have **meant** the same thing because he put a $250K lower bound on this particular ‘tax the rich’ initiative” is not making Romney look any smarter by comparison. Now, I agree with you that Romney’s remark is mostly a trivial gaffe with little if any substantive implication. But that’s exactly why it was so dumb of him to fuck this up. Romney and his handlers ought to know very well that he’s vulnerable on the PR angle of seeming like a clueless out-of-touch fatcat. If he can’t be bothered or isn’t able by this point in the campaign to keep his foot out of his mouth in a routine discussion of kitchen-table economic issues, then I can’t feel too sorry for him if the media don’t cut him any slack when he offers them a perfect opportunity to paint him as a clueless out-of-touch fatcat. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/44 "2012-09-15T20:42:29Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > His valet puts his pants on him one leg at a time. He once went golfing without a caddy. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. You guys had no problem when Obama repeatedly said that he only wanted to tax ‘the rich’, and therefore the cutoff would be anyone making over $250,000. The clear implication there is that people who make less than $250,000 are not part of ‘the rich’. > > Why wasn’t the left breaking his balls and demanding that people making more than say, $150,000 should also be taxed? They’re also ‘rich’, aren’t they? > > At worst, Romney is guilty of using imprecise language. He was accepting Obama’s $250,000 cutoff for what makes you ‘rich’. He used the term ‘middle income’ instead of ‘middle class’. > > These are trivial mistakes, if they’re mistakes at all. But hey, it’s election season, so every little gaffe by Romney will be elevated into a presidency-disqualifying major blunder by the left. Par for the course. That doesn’t mean it’s right. Qualifying people who earn over $250,000 as “rich,” which they are, is still different from saying people earning under $250k are middle class, including those in the $200-250 range. And that’s assuming that’s what he meant to say, which isn’t what he said. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/45 "2012-09-15T20:45:24Z")
Yeah, the relatively minor gaffe (although since folks with income of $250k earn something like 1% of what Romney does he probably does consider them middle class) covers up the real substantive problem that **John Mace** points out. Which is that Romney’s tax plan makes no fucking sense unless you believe in magic pixie voodoo economic growth fairies. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/46 "2012-09-15T20:48:24Z")
And I’ll add a hearty “fuck you” to Obama too for framing it that way in the first place. I understand that he has a lot of donors in the $200k-$250k range, but that bracket should probably buck up and pay a bit more too. Calling folks earning 5 times the median income “middle class” is absurd no matter who’s doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/47 "2012-09-15T20:52:59Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > You aren’t a fucking professor. If you’ve got a point, make it or shut the fuck up. What an asshole. If you keep complimenting him, he will never stop. ---
**Author:** ![Uber\_the\_Goober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/58956e/32.png) [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/48 "2012-09-15T21:05:10Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Just curious, when talking about preserving “middle class tax cuts”, what income level do you think President Obama presents as the upper income range of middle class? :dubious: > > Romney clearly misspoke since he basically said something that contradicts itself “no, $100,000 isn’t middle class” simply contradicts 100% him later saying “middle class is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.” I’d say he probably shouldn’t have said “yes or no” to the question about $100,000 and just said “I’d say middle class is anyone making under $250,000.” I think it obvious that’s what he meant to say, and it actually is pretty much the same definition President Obama uses for middle class. So it’s tough to tell if you are in support of what Romney said, or are against what both him AND Obama have said. A man with that much money, like Romney, who knows how to make so much of it, should be able to know which particular figure he intends to say. Imagine how good of a businessman he'd be if he screwed up with the figures he had in his mind during an important business merger by a similarly large margin. Whatever he intended to say - $250,000 is so far above the middle class as to be laughable. It’s difficult to find an analogy which misrepresents two distinctly different classes of things in a similarly huge way. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/49 "2012-09-15T21:07:49Z")
I got a robo call from the Mitt the other day, he was pleading for donations because he has to outspend Obama in order to win. So I hung on to listen, and pressed 1 for yes to agree to a Romney bumpersticker for a 3 dollar donation. Eventually I lasted long enough on line to get a real live person, she asked if I was going to donate $100 or $200 or more dollars to help Mitt Romney outspend Obama. For a $3 bumpersticker they want over $200! Middle income yepper. I told her to we would be voting for Obama and thanked her for her time. Hope she’s earning double time at the call center. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/50 "2012-09-15T21:09:46Z")
> [@chela](#): > > I told her to we would be voting for Obama and thanked her for her time. Hope she’s earning double time at the call center. Romney workers get compensated with carried interest. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/51 "2012-09-15T21:36:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. You guys had no problem when Obama repeatedly said that he only wanted to tax ‘the rich’, and therefore the cutoff would be anyone making over $250,000. The clear implication there is that people who make less than $250,000 are not part of ‘the rich’. No, you’re wrong. Let’s designate, for the sake of argument, $100,000 as the cut-off between middle class and rich. That would make Obama’s statement true - he would only be taxing the rich if he only taxed people above $250,000. Obama never said he was going to tax all the rich. He’d be letting off the rich people between $100,000 and $250,000. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/52 "2012-09-15T21:49:08Z")
Can we get a specific quote from Obama if we’re going to be discussing what he has supposedly said? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/53 "2012-09-15T22:00:49Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. You guys had no problem when Obama repeatedly said that he only wanted to tax ‘the rich’, and therefore the cutoff would be anyone making over $250,000. The clear implication there is that people who make less than $250,000 are not part of ‘the rich’. > > Why wasn’t the left breaking his balls and demanding that people making more than say, $150,000 should also be taxed? They’re also ‘rich’, aren’t they? A few things. First, speaking for myself and quite a few left/liberals i know, and for some left/liberal commentators, there were quite a few of us who thought that Obama should, in fact, have been raising taxes on people earning less than $250,000, but were most concerned with doing something about the people earning even more than that. My ideal was more broad-ranging tax reform, but given the situation i was willing to accept that the best shot at any reform at all was reform aimed at those earning over $250,000. And that connects with the second point: you talk as if Obama simply got to make this decision himself, as if his statements about taxation weren’t made in the context of a hostile and belligerent Republican opposition, where any talk of asking even the uber-wealthy to cough up a few more bucks for the general welfare is defined as class warfare and the politics of envy. Third, as others have pointed out, there is an excluded middle here. There are scales of wealth, and while someone on a quarter-mil per year might not be hobnobbing with the Romneys of the world, they are still doing pretty damn well for themselves. Even if they’re not rich, they’re not middle-income either. And this goes back to the original point of this thread: the term “middle income” becomes essentially meaningless as a descriptor if its upper level encompasses people in the top 4 or 5 percent of the population, and if its lower level, as suggested by Romney, does not even extend as far down as the nation’s actual median family income. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/54 "2012-09-15T23:48:58Z")
> [@Jenaroph](#): > > This is a man who suggested that young people who needed money to start a business should borrow it from their parents, and whose wife related that when they started out in their first home, they were using an ironing board as a table for a while, as a way of suggesting that they “got it”, they knew what it was like to struggle. > > No, they don’t get it. And every time he opens his mouth, there’s another small reminder of that. [As the song goes](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRPa0GhxGUs&feature=fvst): \* But still you’ll never get it right, cos when you’re laid in bed at night, watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your Dad he could stop it all. You’ll never live like common people, you’ll never do what common people do, you’ll never fail like common people, you’ll never watch your life slide out of view\* ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2012, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/55 "2012-09-15T23:56:55Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Just curious, when talking about preserving “middle class tax cuts”, what income level do you think President Obama presents as the upper income range of middle class? :dubious: As others have pointed out here, you’re wrong about that. But the flip side is that the GOP’s apologists have gone on at great length to show how families pulling down $400K/year are really still struggling to get by, and shouldn’t have their taxes raised at all.\* Meanwhile, they’re saying that public schoolteachers in Chicago are overpaid at $70K/year. \*I remember that one of the more publicized examples was of a family living in the Chicago 'burbs, FWIW. Always nice to be doing the comparison between households in the same MSA. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2012, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/56 "2012-09-16T00:03:21Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > $10 says [del]Socrates[/del] Randy doesn’t come back with a viable explanation. [aside to MOL] I thought I would see if the tards could think for themselves. Having mixed results so far. [/atm] ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2012, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/57 "2012-09-16T01:41:32Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my best friend has a household income that’s got to be over $300,000 and he complains constantly about how he doesn’t understand why the government considers him well off. Here’s the thing though. As someone in that rough ballpark, I can understand both sides of the issues. I would guess your friend is a little older than my wife and I, but the issues are likely the same. Many, if not most of the people in that household income level (eg. 150k-400k) are usually dual-income white collar professionals near a major city. As much as 250k seems like a lot (and it is by any fair standard), it doesn’t go nearly as far in a major city, esp. when you have student loans, and a relatively large mortgage. It’s not that I don’t appreciate that we are doing very well by almost every measure, the problem is that much of that is fairly tenuous, and you start to judge yourself on your peer group who is likely doing as well or better. Like many at that level, if you suddenly couldn’t work, had a child with a costly disability or a crippling disease, most of that coziness goes away in a fairly short period of time. Additionally, once you start to scrape together a little bit wealth, you need to spend protect the slightly elevated lifestyle it affords you. You hire someone to do your taxes, you buy an alarm system, you buy more expensive clothes to fit in, you pay to park in the city you work in. You save for college because you KNOW you will likely be paying sticker cost, and you put more money into retirement to secure matching funds from your employer. And since you likely work a lot of hours, your time becomes more valuable, and less discretionary, which means you spend more of your income paying others to do things you don’t have time or energy to do (eg. child care, yard work, etc.). As I said before, I get that people take care of all these things on far less money, but the utility you expect will come from that extra money is often largely illusory. That’s why a guy who makes 6x the median income can honestly think things don’t seem THAT good for him. Yeah, it’s kinda crazy to think that on one level, but it’s easy to understand why he’s confused when people act as though he’s Donald Trump. More importantly, I think some of the cognitive dissonance comes from the fact that many people you don’t FEEL special or rich because you’ve been with a peer group doing as well, and because you likely don’t have some insanely uncommon or specialized job. Many of the people we are talking about are doctors, lawyers, people who have a restaurant franchise, engineers, bankers, etc. They still work for someone, and they often times have to do menial tasks their bosses assign them, just as poorer people do. They ride the same metro, shop at most of the same places, fly coach, etc. Most of these people can’t fire people, they don’t run things, and they usually have to answer to several people that are considerably richer and more powerful than they are. It’s easy to feel like a well-paid grunt. Yes, it’s considerably better than being a low-paid grunt, but it also doesn’t mean you don’t feel like you are in the same rat race as everyone else even though you are running a bit faster, and on a more comfortable wheel. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2012, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/58 "2012-09-16T01:46:22Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Additionally, once you start to scrape together a little bit wealth, you **need** to spend protect the slightly elevated lifestyle it affords you. That word. I do not think it means what you think it means. ETA: Your whining is basically the woe-is-me equivalent of the argument i made earlier. Many wealthy people are so busy looking up at the multi-millionaires and wishing that they had a similar lifestyle, while also making sure they keep up with their neighborhood Joneses, that they completely forget that literally 95 percent of the American population, and about 99-point-something percent of the world’s population, lives a far more difficult lifestyle than they do. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2012, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/59 "2012-09-16T01:48:46Z")
I agree with almost everything you said, **brickbacon** , except that I would not hesitate to say that we are, by any objective standard, “rich”. Although, as you state, I don’t always feel that way when I’m mowing the lawn or flying coach while the first class guys skip the security line. There is strong psychology involved, and it takes real effort to be, at least at some level, continuously aware of at least some of the true realities of the world. And if you want to meld this back into policy, then I would propose that the very disparate economic perceptions of a $250k household and a $20m household might call for some higher bracket than what we currently have available, no? ETA: I’ll add that I particular like your comment about not feeling particularly “special” because everyone you know has your job (or something similar to it). This is extremely true, and only gets worse the more you make. I would like to tie that back to Mitt’s comment about how he’s not a NASCAR fan but has some friends who own teams… this dissonance runs all the way to the very top. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756/60 "2012-09-16T01:53:31Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > this dissonance runs all the way to the very top. I’m sure it does. My only concern with it is when it affects policy. If your dissonance keeps you up at night, or causes you to fume petulantly at having to fly coach, i suggest spending some of that money on a good shrink. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-200-000-250-000-is-middle-income/634756.md?page=4)