Why so much focus on helping the middle class?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Part of the issue is that middle class is usually screwed either way.

Often shoulder the tax liabilities while the rich, poor and corporations get tax breaks

Relatively few government benefits like school aid and after 2008 the ability to get a home loan. I did not get any of the second/third stimulus because at $80k I’m too rich to need help. I also lost my National Board stipend for this year. All so more help could go to the lower class/unemployed**.

At the same time housing prices are going up so the middle class is turning into lifelong renters. College tuition is going up so welcome to lifelong debt to get an education. See above - no need based help there.

Wages that trail behind inflation meaning a decline in real income. And the development of the working-poor. The poverty level is so low in this country that people working 40 hours a week at Wal-Mart etc. cannot afford to pay their bills but are not “poor” since they are above the poverty line. And that pay inequity keeps increasing.

** For the record I don’t necessarily begrudge all of this but it is disconcerting to hear that as a teacher working two jobs I was “rich”. And I’m lucky to have a job and can eat and pay my mortgage but when I hear that a friend’s husband refuses to find a job after getting fired for fighting with his boss and he gets increased unemployment benefits to sit on a couch watching TV all day - yeah I’m pissed my stipend for working with at-risk students effectively went to him instead.

22

Another example that supports Wesley_Clark’s post.

Punch up, not down.

23

Given our demographics, it is more important to look at your location than the nation as a whole. $200K/yr is very different in San Francisco, CA than Pierre, SD.

24

Is it really punching down if the “down” person is just choosing not to work because they’d rather live on the increased Covid benefits?

25

Yes. You are still upset that someone is “taking advantage” of the system that is there to benefit lower income people. How many people would elect to go back to a crappy job and make less if they didn’t have to?

26

But the additional Covid benefits aren’t designed explicitly for lower income people. They were designed around the idea that a bunch of middle class people as well would lose their jobs and still need to pay the mortgage.

27

And? Is it this guys fault that he can make more on unemployment and elects to do that? And we should look down on him for choosing higher pay for less work?

Do you think Jeff Bezos worked hard enough to “earn” the $70 billion his wealth went up last year? Sure, let’s pick on the guy that makes more on unemployment than working - he’s ripping us off!

28

It’s not punching down to criticize him for it.

29

You are criticizing someone for electing to make more money by not working. That sounds like a smart guy to me. I don’t know that he is abusing anything unless you have some personal insight into how he is lying on his application or something.

30

The website @Dinsdale pointed to includes features for establishing the percentile ranking of a given household income in various cities and states.

The website describes “middle class income” as ranging from 1/2 of median to 2X median - in other words, $34,200 to $136,800.

31

Regardless, it’s not punching down. If I’m making a middle class living and give shit to someone who is on food stamps and buys a cake, I’m punching down. If I give shit to some guy making a middle class living on Covid assistance, I’m not punching down. You might find a hundred excuses to handwave away what he’s doing but you can’t seriously claim that I’m punching down.

32

The middle class is the economic backbone of a healthy economy. Much if not most of our money goes right back out by purchasing goods and services, and we pay a high rate of tax compared to what we make. The rich just hoard and strive for more and more. They pay very little in taxes compared to what they are making. They pretty much contribute nothing to the economy. The poor soak up tax dollars in the form of unemployment benefits, welfare, food stamps, etc.

33

This reminds me of the time a lady in the checkout line berated my mother for using foodstamps to buy a cake. It was my birthday.

34

Don’t ya know? If you are poor and soaking up my tax money, you don’t deserve cake. That’s reserved for the middle class and above. :roll_eyes:

35

Yeah, that is one approach. But I was thinking of what groups seemed most similar to me. In MOST locations, someone earning between $75-200k could support a decent lifestyle for a family of 4. Sure, the folk at the bottom are gonna be tighter, but they still can make it.

IMO, less than $75k makes it a lot tougher to have a decent family home, car, etc - in all but very low-income rural areas. Other than mathmatically choosing the middle 50%, do you really think $34k would support much of a comfortable living for a family just about anywhere?

And once you get over $200k, you really should have a lot more disposable income. But at $124k, I envision most folk living in a decent but modest home, driving average cars, having to save/budget carefully for college/vacations/luxuries…

Yeah - that is a very real point. And I’m not sure one can simply say, “Move to someplace w/ a lower cost of living.” The equivalent to the $200k SF job might not exist in SD. But I wonder what comparisons can be made for many jobs that DO exist in various localities. Say policeman, nurse, caregiver, waiter… If you earn $100k in SF, what would you expect to earn in SD?

How do entities address this? I know my government job has locality adjustments - but they are NOWHERE NEAR the actual costs. Here is the US Govt pay scales.

Just picking one grade/step at random - 13-1, base pay is $79.5k. That is what every GS-1 earns, except for certain localities where it is adjusted up. But I suspect the calculation is less than precise. For example, a 13-1 earns $92k in Des Moines or Omaha. I’d wager $92k in Omaha or Des Moines would support a far higher std of living than the adjusted $105k, $106.5, or the top 112k GS-13s earn in LA, NYC, or San Jose respectively. Of course, you’d have to live in either Omaha or Des Moines! :wink:

36

And a busted system. I can think of a lot of things that I could do with MY money that I pay in taxes, instead of subsidizing people to be lazy and not work. They’re supposed to be stimulus payments in the sense of “go spend it to stimulate the economy”, with a secondary effect of alleviating financial hardship in those who need it. There’s no intent of providing freedom from having to provide for yourself involved.

From what I can see here, the bottom 50% of taxpayers by income only pay about 1.2 out of 11 trillion dollars, and the top 10% pay about 5.2 trillion. That leaves another 5 trillion or so paid by the middle class. I would assume that since that’s also a huge number of voters, that’s where the politicians spend their efforts, rather than concentrating on the rich.

37

Have you heard of Lobbying? That is primarily the domain of the rich and not the middle class. The do spend money to make laws that let them save more money and pay less.

38

Of course it’s a problem. Even Karl Marx recognized that.

It doesn’t matter how many dollars are printed if goods and services aren’t produced proportionately.

Bezos at least provides a service. And the billions he has reflects, in part, the value of that service.

39

Can you share your definition of “the rich?”

40

From a quick Google search: How much wealth does the 1% own?

“The top one percent of the usual income distribution holds over $25 trillion in wealth , which exceeds the wealth of the bottom 80 percent. That is more than all the goods and services produced in the U.S. economy in 2018.” - Jun 25, 2019