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I knw people who fit that description making $12/hour.
I would NOT Call <$25k year/pretax "middle class"
And no, someone to went to a "certain school" making $5k/year is NOT "upper class"
But a family collectively earning 50K (25K a piece) would be considered middle class in many parts of the country.
That's why I think it's important to look beyond the numbers. Everyone has an opinion on what they should mean.
Middle class in my opinion... Money in the bank or invested, steady income, ability to roll with the economic punches. Many people have survived layoffs and crap jobs by finding secondary sources of income, often by using the internet.
Instead of thinking that living in Massachusetts is akin to the land of milk and honey, Indiana is far better than Tennessee, I wonder if this gives you a bit more perspective.
(Emigrations is from small-town northeast Tennessee, trained for a couple of weeks in Boston, and now lives in Indiana. I'm from Massachusetts, now live in Knoxville where I have a lot more money in my pocket.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bronxguyanese
The American Middle Class started to slowly decline after the 73 oil crisis which hurted the US economy. Later Administrations like Reagan, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama saw middle class decline even further with the support of tax breaks for the wealthy. I suggest you guys to watch PBS two American families. Its one of the saddest things I have watched and made me cry. The documentary shows two families in a span of 25 years living under 5 different presidents and how the economy has changed for them and their families. It takes place in industrial Milwaukee. Shows two families who were once middle class in the 80s and went through economic changes, surviving marriages, divorces, health problems, loosing homes, jobs, watch their kids grow and their situation is not even better.
I agree with a lot of this. I also think that the slow decline started in the 60s, when Big Business began buying out a lot of very large family businesses. Big Business started to move manufacturing and other operations out of the US, forever changing the wallets of middle-class America.
Yes, there is rock-bottom cheap labor and you don't have to pay the starving masses bennies if you move operations overseas. But the VAT tax and inversions aren't talked about or probably known or understood by the majority of Americans.
The biggest overseas stampede started in 1983 when McDermott International changed it's addy to Panama and avoided paying $200M to the US taxman. US company "headquarters" in several countries consist of one room, one desk, and a guy working on his tan.
Meanwhile, very few corporations pay the 35 percent tax rate. Latest figures show that, since 2007, profits are actually up 21 percent but their tax bills have dropped about five percent.
Obama has attempted to stop inversions, and has seen support on both sides of the aisle. But hey, when legislators are paid by Corporate America, the buck stopped there (or not), so to speak.
Yes, the boom and bust of the housing industry had a lot to do with the decline in the past eight years, but that's why it was called a bubble. Hiring everyone with a pulse that showed up on a housing construction site - and the economic boom that came from that - was never going to last, anyway.
But a family collectively earning 50K (25K a piece) would be considered middle class in many parts of the country.
That's why I think it's important to look beyond the numbers. Everyone has an opinion on what they should mean.
Middle class in my opinion... Money in the bank or invested, steady income, ability to roll with the economic punches. Many people have survived layoffs and crap jobs by finding secondary sources of income, often by using the internet.
I think it's important to be realistic. Life happens and not everyone is living the "dream." Not everyone is a doctor, a lawyer or even have a college degree. Some of us females over 50 were expected to marry well, not continue with an education. Not everyone can even hope to work as a secretary (a dying profession), married to a guy that worked at Walmart for 20 years, and making $40,000 to $50,000, combined. Spouses die. Or run away.
Try being a woman in her 50s with a 14-year-old. Getting a job, let alone making $12 an hour, isn't easy. In the past year, I've been out of work 8 months. In the US, people walk past a woman my age, never even noticing her. And in my profession - sales - that's the death knell.
Oh, and good luck finding a partner for the same darned reason.
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And by all means, keep using the red herring. Debate the meaning of "class" rather than acknowledge that Corporate America has been killing the middle class for 45 years, while our elected officials throw up their own red herrings while lining their pockets.
The fix is to increase immigration and thus increases demand and economic growth.
This is never a fix. Immigrants suck money out of the system...they add costs, raise existing costs, and depress wages. Exactly the opposite of what we need to generate economic growth.
67-200% of the median may define middle income but it doesn't have much to do with class. Class is a set of aspirations, attitudes, and behaviors. A Harvard student living on $5000 a year is upper middle class; a thug who just had a hit record and who's swimming in money is still lower class.
I would say that if you're a homeowner or reasonably aspire to be one, went to at least some college and your kids have the same expectation, and you have a full-time job or equivalent (such as owning a small business), you're middle class.
I disagree. Class is the ability to support the lifestyle defined by those aspirations and behaviors. You may intend all you wish to go to college, your parents may have gone, but if you're poor, then you're not middle class.
There is a big difference between class and income. What the government is defining is probably middle income, not middle class.
This is never a fix. Immigrants suck money out of the system...they add costs, raise existing costs, and depress wages. Exactly the opposite of what we need to generate economic growth.
That is why we need to increase wages over there, so they don't come here.
This is never a fix. Immigrants suck money out of the system...they add costs, raise existing costs, and depress wages. Exactly the opposite of what we need to generate economic growth.
Poor immigrants would increase the size of the US GDP, but per capita it would definitely be a loser. I can't imagine why anyone would want this except the people who think they own the country.
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