92K might not be rich, but it’s darn close from where I’m sitting. Let’s say “well-off” rather than “rich.” The average household income in my county is about $40,000 a year. My household income, with two adults working full-time, is a bit less than that. We’re not hurting, but we don’t have much of a cushion in case things go wrong. I can’t imagine living in a household that makes 92K a year.
A lot depends on where you live but generally $92 a year is not “rich”. If you are poor or live in a rural area or are a kid right out of school, $92k may seem like all the money in the world but it really isn’t. Don’t get me wrong…I could live really comfortably even in NYC for that kind of money, but I wouldn’t be rich.
What is $92,000 when houses in my area (tri-state NY area) cost $300,000 a year, a good college costs $25,000 a year? And these aren’t big Scrooge McDuck houses that you associate with the rich…they are average split level ranches that cost probably $120,000 in the Midwest.
One quote I read considers anyone with a $200,000+ salary or over $2,000,000 in assets rich. But again…these are just numbers.
$92,000 is “upper-middle class”. It’s a middle manager at some company or a first year associate lawyer, consultant or investment banker working 100 hours a week while some MD dumps stacks of work in their lap (doesn’t sound rich to me). It’s a guy with a couple of Armani shirts, a cell phone, maybe an SUV and a DVD player living comfortably.
To Joe Sixpack that seems rich but a REAL rich person owns a couple of houses and maybe a couple rental properties. They own their own businesses. They don’t need to drive a $100,000 Porsche but they could if they want to. They have over a million $$ is assets.
I didn’t know how poor I was until I started making a little money.
You actually miss the “People’s Republic of Cambridge” tm. !?
Being from the North Shore, myself, sure I can see a house in Salem going for $215k. But, that is the exception rather than the rule.
I too, have heard Hannity using it. (On Fox, not on radio). I think this is a push-back by the conservatives. The liberals claim “Bush’s tax cuts are for the rich.” Then conservatives counter with “who is rich?” Somehow this 92K number has come up, probably because a liberal got backed into a corner somwhere and said it.
That’s just silly. Of course the liberals don’t want to tax the rich out of existence. If they did, there would be nobody left to tax to pay for their over-priced pet programs. 
Jeff
Having an income in the 10% of the distribution isn’t necessarily rich, and neither is attaining multiplier of median income. It depends on the distribution, for one thing.
Rich implies having material wealth; having goods, property and money in abundance. Around here, people who bring home $92K before taxes don’t fit that description. They might not be pinching pennies, but they can’t spend freely and they’re not living in large homes with buckets of equity in them.
I make a little less than 92k per year, so I am almost rich? Yes, I do consider myself very lucky and pay my fair share of taxes each year without too much complaint. However, a tax cut to all those that pay income tax is a good idea. Our government is wasteful.
In case you have not noticed, you DO pay more taxes than someone who makes 19k per year!!! As someone already pointed out, somebody making 19k per year actually get’s a refund of $3000 because of the standard deduction…of $4500!
Ummm…Taxes ARE higher for the “rich”…And that’s an interesting theory that the so-called rich get the most benefit from taxes.
They (poor) don’t pay any INCOME tax…see above. The poor pay sales tax and in some places food tax. The food tax is what you need to eliminate for the poor.
jeel-- I think Tris knew that those statements were, in fact, the status quo, and that Tris agrees with them. (i.e., “I pay more taxes than someone making 19,000 a year. This is proper. I SHOULD be paying more taxes than someone making 19,000 a year.”)
okay.
I agree with Tris. I think that rich people should pay more income taxes also, but also that they should get more back when there is a cut in income tax.
If tax cuts affected everyone equally, they would. But somehow, it often seems to only affect them. :shrug:
If you don’t have to worry about whether you can afford to take the family on a European vacation; about whether you can afford a new-model car; about whether you could pay for health insurance for yourself if you had to; about whether you can make next month’s house payment; about whether you’ll be able to afford to send all your kids to good colleges; about whether you’ll be able to throw your daughter the kind of wedding that gets videotaped and not polaroided; about whether DSL is really worth it; about whether it would really be so bad to do without “The Sopranos” and “Queer As Folk” and “Sex and the City” for a season; about whether your next evening out at a restaurant will involve the golden arches…
If you don’t have to worry about things like that, you’re rich.
You wouldn’t feel that way if you had to live here in the Silicon Valley. Man, real estate prices here are ridiculous!
If you do have to worry about whether you can make next month’s house payment, on a regular basis, this doesn’t mean “you’re not rich” so much as “you bought a house that was beyond your means.”
With a big enough house in a premium location, even a multimillionaire can have trouble scrounging up enough to make next month’s house payment, if he’s careless.
I don’t think this argument is anywhere near correct. For one thing, the standard deduction is a deduction from your income NOT a tax credit. There’s a big difference.
There is an earned income tax credit that can actually mean you get money from the government (essentially, pay no income tax and get a bit of a rebate on payroll taxes) but I don’t think it kicks in like that. And, my wild-ass guess is that someone earning $19000 ain’t gonna get $3000 back by any stretch.
Well, it is pretty obvious once you consider that many basic services provided by the government (such as police protection, etc.) have a worth at least proportional to the amount of money you have. Probably more when you consider the idea of how rich one could become in the absence of government. I don’t think anarchy would produce someone earning even 1/1000 of what Bill Gates has earned for himself.
They also pay payroll (social security and medicare) taxes if they are working.
I think we ought to put this sort of thing to music, “Jack, You Rich”
Great post Scott Dickerson.
Do you guys want to know what not-rich looks like?
I woke up this morning to my cell phone alarm. I lost my regular alarm clock, and can’t really justify buying a new one when my cell phone alarm usually wakes me up. I got up to take a shower, but the faucet on my 1950’s era bathtub broke again (my flaky landlord sends over sketchy guys she knows to “fix” it instead of plumbers that could actually do the work). I’m not too upset because we keep our water heater temp pretty low so showers are rarely more than lukewarm and since our bathroom doesn’t have any ventilation we have to keep the window open always, which makes the bathroom too cold to really contemplate a tempid shower.
So I brush my teeth. My back tooth has a giant hole in it where a filling fell out a year ago. Food gets stuck there. It is gross. I got a root canal on it, but I can’t afford to get it crowned. I’m a little worried because my wisdom teeth are coming in and I don’t know how I am going to afford all this dental work that I need, but meanwhile I know it is just getting worse. I brush them pretty obsessively to make up for the lack of dental work. I have nightmares about loosing my teeth.
I drink some coffee, because I don’t have any food that isn’t bean, rice or pasta and I won’t have anything fresh until my paycheck gets deposited and I find a ride to the store. Caffeine makes you not feel hungry, and generally I don’t get too shaky if I only use it to replace one meal or so a day. I figure I can justify buying a full burrito for lunch. I brush my teeth again.
I wash my face, shave my armpits with my three-week old razor, and run my fingers through my hair (lost my comb- will steal new one from mom next time I visit).
I put on a pair of jeans and a Gap sweater, both found at the Front Street Thrift half-price sale, and go to catch my bus.
Now I’m obviously not rich. But I don’t consider myself poor- especially considering that I am young and don’t have kids. It gets a lot lot worse than this. But next time you consider your ranch home and your car cable TV to be “middle class neccesities”, think for a moment about what luxeries they really are. “Struggling” means a lot more than having to make do with a compact car instead of a sedan. Right now I consider anyone who can run their heat at night to be rich, because it’s gonna be a dman cold night tonight.
Goodnight!
You have a cell phone? Wow. Do you keep it on your yacht?
But I need my car cable TV! Sure, there are costs involved with having several miles of coaxial cable dangling out the back of my car wherever I drive, and having to reel out more and more cable at 60+ miles per hour – but how else am I going to be able to watch the Home Shopping Network while I’m driving on the freeway? I might miss an important bargain!
So very true. There are plenty of people making lots of money who don’t have furniture in their “faux chateaus” because they have overspent.
On the other hand, I have a girlfriend with three children, a teachers salary, and a stay at home husband who has been to Europe recently - more recently than I have (and we make in excess of 92k a year - quite a bit in excess actually).
I have relatives who live in a more expensive house than I do. They drive newer cars than I do, they take more trips than I do. They have more toys than I do (motorcycles, boats, etc) They live a lifestyle significantly “richer” than the one I live. They make significantly less money.
Rich is a very fuzzy concept. There is almost always someone better off than you that can make you feel poor by what they have.
Certainly, even Even Sven or Eris is rich in comparision to the families living in the dumps of Mexico City. I’m rich in comparison to them. My uncle is rich in comparison to me. And Warren Buffet is rich in comparison to him.
But since Sven posted what not rich looks like, here is what rich looks like.
I’m 36 years old, my husband 37. We live in a three bedroom home in the Twin Cities. Nice, but plain old formica countertops. Cheap cupboards. Certainly not a magazine home. My husband, myself and two preschool age children. The kids go to daycare (I don’t know how people who aren’t rich afford daycare). We both work. I drive a 1999 Subaru Forester. My husband drives a 2000 Passat. We only own the one home. We have two televisions, basic cable, three computers, and a cable modem connection. We both carry cell phones, but I won’t let my husband buy a new one since his is only about six months old. I sewed my own drapes. I painted all the walls in my house - but I did hire someone to do the stairs cause I don’t like heights. We are waiting to have enough money in savings to finish the basement. My kids have a couple grand apiece in their college accounts. We probably have significantly more than average in our 401ks and deferred comp accounts (but I couldn’t tell you what, and it isn’t over $200,000). We took a vacation a year ago to Disneyworld, and will take another vacation (again to Disneyworld) next year. My sisters and I are taking my mother to San Francisco for her 60th birthday (shhhh! Its still a surprise), but are flying coach and staying in a nice but not too expensive hotel. I am currently wearing a shirt I paid $9 for a Kohls and shoes I bought at Target. I have someone clean my house twice a week, we shovel our own snow and mow our own lawn. We have no debt except for the mortgage, which was a 30 year mortgage when we bought the house five years ago, and should be paid off in another five years. I can buy a latte at Starbucks without thinking about it, can take the kids to McDonalds without thinking about it. I need a new mattress, but won’t buy one until my husband’s bonus comes in March. I can usually spend around $100 at a time without really having to think - any more than that and it makes a change in the cash flow.
I have been (and within the last decade) poor enough that I kept my house at 60 degrees during the Minnesota winter, ate a lot of Ramen and the cheap off brand Mac n Cheese, and didn’t own any car at all (well, I had a car, but it broke and got towed, and since I couldn’t afford to fix it anyway and couldn’t afford to bail it out…).
Your wild ass guess is entirely correct. I made about $19,600 last year, and I figure I’ll be lucky if I can avoid having to pay any more than I’ve already paid through payroll deductions. It absolutely boggles my mind that anyone could think people at my income level would get a $3000 tax refund. I wish to hell that someone would show me how to finagle this. I could sure as hell use the money.
Look, I’m gonna hafta stop typing RIGHT NOW before I go off on some long, flaming rant about thoroughly, totally and completely fucked the working poor are when it comes to taxes.