# Where are the upper and lower boundaries of the American middle class? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 18, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888 "2013-07-18T23:01:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/61 "2013-07-19T20:19:51Z")
> [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > And expenses matter a lot. My household income is $80,000 and I live in a cheap part of the country. If I were a single person supporting only myself, I’d consider myself upper middle class. Plenty of money for everything I need and I lot of extra spending money. > > But in reality my household income is $80,000 and that goes to support 6 people. Then there is me, who is single and in a cheap part of the country but who chooses to not upgrade my lifestyle despite the fact that I can afford to. I agree that, at least on the margins like ourselves, you can consider lifestyle, profession, and relatives/connections, but it’s not as important compared to money as some behavior and social-circle driven classifiers would have us believe. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/62 "2013-07-19T20:44:09Z")
Oops. **Palo Verde** is a she. My apologies, Ms. **Verde**. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/63 "2013-07-19T20:59:29Z")
I consider a nice restaurant anything with waitstaff and tablecloths. Most of the time eating out involves the phrase “do you want fries with that?” And we went out for my son’s birthday to a Chinese buffet, it cost over $80 for all 6 of us, which is a lot of money for just dinner. A place you need reservations and a tie? Unaffordable. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/64 "2013-07-19T21:51:10Z")
> [@Palo\_Verde](#): > > But, it is also a social issue. My husband is a professor with a PhD and I stay home with the kids. A family with one person a hairdresser and the other a mechanic might make the same salary, but they would be in a different social class. Yes, there’s a difference between middle income and middle class. I have a friend who makes about $50K a year doing skilled labor. Middle income even in NYC for a single person. But he’s not as educated as the rest of the group, doesn’t enjoy good food ( and by “good food” I don’t mean a $100 a person steakhouse- I mean he prefers McDonald’s and Wendy s to a better burger at Applebee’s and money is not the issue), only reads the sports section ,has no interest in current events,doesn’t watch the same type of movies as the rest of us, doesn’t have an email address and has no interest in travel except to watch or participate in sporting events, .He’s a great friend, but he’s not in the same class as the rest of us. (Which is why we usually only see him in the context of a sports event or a barbeque. ) ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/65 "2013-07-20T05:56:55Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Same question. > > Is class determined by an INCOME + ASSETS - DEBT calculation, or is this too simplistic? As others have alluded to, what the upper class have is leverage. This was depicted in a scene from _Barney Miller_, where they were booking a high-on-the-hog dealer who had all the fancy trappings, and Detective Harris sputtered, “You may have all this but I have something worth a lot more: _credit_.” For the truly wealthy, it is a sort of balancing game. It is not clear that they really do own all that stuff or have all that money, but they are very good at shifting the debt around to maintain their bailiwicks or empires. If a rich guy loses millions of dollars, it is often (though not always) a speed bump, and he has enough good faith credit to his name that he can refinance the loss without tremendous distress. Which kind of defines the difference between middle and upper class. Middle class people become destitute when they lose everything, most upper class people just leverage their way back to where they were. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/66 "2013-07-20T06:14:21Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > I was kind of hoping for dollar ranges here. My 2012 household income from salaries alone was a little over $270K, and a little over $300K I would consider you upper or (if you have a family of 4 or 5) upper-middle. I earned that for a few years and at the time I considered myself upper. I now earn a lot less (about $100K and consider myself middle to upper middle. ---
**Author:** ![BleizDu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@BleizDu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BleizDu)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/67 "2013-07-20T06:18:34Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Yes, there’s a difference between middle income and middle class. I have a friend who makes about $50K a year doing skilled labor. Middle income even in NYC for a single person. But he’s not as educated as the rest of the group, doesn’t enjoy good food ( and by “good food” I don’t mean a $100 a person steakhouse- I mean he prefers McDonald’s and Wendy s to a better burger at Applebee’s and money is not the issue), only reads the sports section ,has no interest in current events,doesn’t watch the same type of movies as the rest of us, doesn’t have an email address and has no interest in travel except to watch or participate in sporting events, .He’s a great friend, but he’s not in the same class as the rest of us. (Which is why we usually only see him in the context of a sports event or a barbeque. ) Yep. I’ve found first hand this phenomenom a couple years ago. We’ve (Me and my bf) been at the poverty line, or just under, for a handful of years, our only regular income is welfare, but our way of living allow us to live ok on about 10 000 euros/year. But up until a couple years ago, we were renting to a private landlord, the people living around us in the little village were all solidly middle class and we were feeling at ease, even with the difference in income. (we’re both from a middle class background) But now we’ve been renting through social housing, and many of our neighbors are lower class and we basically don’t fit in at all. We have less money than many of them but our centers of interests and upbringing are just too different to form deep friendships with most of them. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888/68 "2013-07-20T06:24:15Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > I think I may agree with this. I guess it just seems odd to me that upper-class is such a broad strata that it includes both millionaires and someone at my income level without any additional tiering. I would say: 1% elite 4% upper 25% upper middle 25% middle 25% lower middle 20% lower [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-the-upper-and-lower-boundaries-of-the-american-middle-class/663888.md?page=3)