“Entitlement” has a lot of baggage around it these day, but it does describe an aspect of human nature. Once you have it fixed in your mind that you do things a certain way, that that is the “real” way, then it’s really hard to adapt or to see alternatives. I think this is one of the main reasons people struggle to keep off weight they’ve lost: permanently changing the way you eat, your underlying assumptions about eating, is weirdly, humbling-ly difficult. Once you are in a life style, it seems like the null-state. If you are a person who flies, taking the bus is hard to imagine.
I mean, I can shake my head at people who can’t imagine living on my household income (~$60K/family of three), and say “wow, how out of touch they are!” but I also really have no idea how people who make $30K and have a family of three survive. I mean, they do it, so clearly it’s possible, but, fuck, it’s hard for me to imagine. At my salary, we are comfortable, but we have to be careful. I’ve no idea how I’d cut half of it out.
Indeed. It’s always come across to me as an extremely safe play: he’s talking about taxing people whom nobody but nobody could possibly consider middle-income. Of course I’m not going to criticize him for some tortured reading of the policy made by someone who disagrees with him on everything anyway.
Having followed the NY Times link, I’m unconvinced that he’s equating $250,000 with the upper limit on “middle class”: he repeatedly refers to the folks earning more than that as the “wealthiest Americans” and then, separate from that number, talks about the “middle class”.
However, I’ll stipulate that Obama intends to consider everyone at $249,000 and below to be middle class. Even then, he’s not in agreement with Romney, because “middle income” means something very different from “middle class.”
Again however, I’ll call this one a wash, because folks are right: it’s possible that Romney made a minor misstatement, and meant to say “middle class” instead of “middle income.” Fair enough.
Your post is all too familiar brickbacon and I find it depressing.
My job takes me into contact with people of your income level and above, in a capacity where they will be rather more open than they anticipated.
The underlying dissatisfaction they have, the “never enough” culture. Ultimately it is destructive because they are never happy with what they have. They tend to work ridiculous hours and their relationships suffer as a result. So many people in their 30’s with no companionship, so many couples that break down due to work pressure. So many people with income levels so high and yet are so insecure that they feel the need to have a certain house, suit, car, phone, pool, watch. etc.
They don’t get them because they want them, they buy them out of a ill-perceived need, there is no joy in that.
Are there exceptions? Certainly, but if anything those examples of people having it all and being happy merely fuel much of the acquisitive misery in their wake.
I would just like to point out that the world average income is around $8,000, and I’m sure hearing Americans claiming that an income of $60,000 represents real hardship is just as outrageous to them. And as I’m routinely reminded, this is an international board.
Hell, even by 1st world standards Americans are pretty well off. Nornalized by purchasing power, in 2011 the average American had a disposable income of about $42,000. That’s about $10,000 higher than Canada, my country. It’s about $15,000 higher than 1st world countries like Denmark, Germany, Finland, Belgium, and France. The poverty line for a family in the U.S. is higher than the median income in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and other similar countries with a large middle class.
By world standards, almost all Americans are ‘rich’. The poverty line in the U.S. is higher than the world average income. So if you’re middle class in America, don’t get too high-and-mighty about the $200,000 people claiming that they’re not rich. Compared to most other countries, you’re rich too.
But it is a need in certain social circles and professions to keep up appearances, people love to deny that but its true. Can you buck the trend? Sure, but you’ll be as popular as a fundamentalist christian at a swingers club.
What’s all this debate about how poor or rich you feel… I would expect that people FEEL about as rich or poor at a billion dollars as they would at twenty thousand dollars, that’s just being human.
That debate completely misses that Romney shouldn’t be considering empirical issues like this based on how he FEELS, he should be basing them on objective FACTS. And this suggests less connection to the facts, and consequently reality, than 99% of the populace.
Just accept our overlords and take it and like it?
There’s also a little thing called “cost of living”. It’s generally HIGHER in the US, than in all those places you mentioned, for the most part.
Also, in those places you mentioned, the government provides free healthcare, and many other things that we pay for out of pocket here, or at least pay a lot MORE for, in terms of percentage of total cost of, here. Public transportation comes to mind.
And did you really compare the former Soviet Bloc with the US?
Dude, I don’t even know who you think you were convincing. Did you maybe post while extremely tired or sleepy?
Sure if I took my American salary and moved to a third world country I can live like a king. It doesn’t work that way. Hell if I could earn my current salary and move to Alabama I can live like a king. I don’t think I would have to pay $16000 a year in property taxes. Or 2-3 thousand in car insurance. I could go on. New Jersey is the highest taxed and highest cost of living state in the country. A 100k salary puts you firmly in the middle class not . All this talk reminds me of republican anti-union and anti-state worker talk. Class warfare and governance by schadenfreude.
Wait, what? Are you saying that in NJ, 100K won’t put you in the middle class? By my calculation, that’s equivalent to a $71K salary in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The point is that you actually have both property that needs taxing and a car that needs insuring.
For much of the world those things are a madman’s dream. Those two single things alone put you in the category of “rich” to the majority of the world population,
I don’t have too much time for people earning a good wage who think they are badly done to. Some people I know do exactly that and yet when you start analysing their spending habits the reason they are skint becomes blindingly obvious. They just don’t have a good grasp of where their money goes and constantly focus on keeping up appearances. Whatever they do have will never be enough to satisfy them.
