Sure. My point is that America is so broken economically that people cannot get their heads wrapped around how concentrated the wealth is and stuff like the idea of “middle class” creates all these psychological disconnects because the median household income doesn’t generate a mid 20th century apple pie and white picket fence lifestyle that Americans associate with the middle class.
There are a lot more rich people than than there used to be. You have to make a lot of money to be in the top 1%. Significantly more than typical professionals earning potential. 1 in 100 families have at least that level of affluence.
The level of rent seeking we’re seeing systemically is inevitably going to tip the whole thing over. The question is when not if.
125k is definitely upper middle, at least before this hyperinflation
IMO Upper Middle class is basically that you have enough to comfortably cover your necessities plus health care. You aren’t worried about money on a day to day basis, but you also aren’t able to spend on anything without having to worry about money. You can own a decent house (obviously this is different in places like NYC or SF)
Being able to afford 4 years of private college for your kid(s) definitely is higher than upper middle class.
Excluding health care from necessities is the kind of hilarious American framing of the issue that will trigger a lot of Canadian snark. Maybe that’s why we beat you at hockey nearly half the time, losers!
And calling that “upper middle class” is absurd.
I’m not sure what the lower bound on “upper middle class household” is, but it definitely has six figures, and I’m not even sure if the first digit is 1.
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Upper middle class is a brick house in a nice (aka mostly white) neighborhood with great public schools. And being able to pay for in-state tuition for your kids when they get to college.
Private schools definitely fall into the upper class category
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It’s really hard to establish things on these metrics, what do you even do with families that don’t have kids if that’s your basis for identifying class?
One interesting approach is to quantify class by the nature of work (what we used to call blue collar vs. white collar). Some analysis of class structures in the economy looks at things like how self directed one’s work is. That’s fascinating to me as a way to look at things, and probably is just as important as trying to count up household income and then back out all the impacts of the cost of living in different areas and who has kids and who doesn’t, etc.
Yea it’s kinda tricky with no kids, but I feel like if you can live comfortably in a city that has a top 15% public school district that’s a pretty good indicator
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OK, so how many classes have you got? Because I think a family of salaried professionals who can send their kids to private school has way, way, way more in common than the people in your “upper middle class” than the mega rich, or even much of the so-called gentry, to borrow a term from another wealth discussion here, so I don’t think 4 classes is really going to describe the actual stratification all that well if you’re lumping these people in with the mega rich.
Define “being able”.
I’m going with middle class, upper middle class, upper class and then filthy rich I guess. I feel like my upbringing was firmly upper middle class, but private high school or college was definitely out of the question. But once again we had great public schools, so what’s the point of private high school?
As someone who hate reads bogleheads on the reg, you should know that you can’t really define it in terms of “worrying about money”. There are plenty of people on there who are well beyond anyone’s definition of upper middle class, who worry about money excessively.
The background to this debate is that the .01% have sooooooo much fucking money. Like a truly incomprehensible amount.
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But they’re Job Creators!
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the problem here is the wealth is so concentrated at the top that any definition of “upper” is gonna feel a bit outrageous for anyone not near the top.
Yeah you can’t group an MD making 250k/year with someone who buys super-yachts and flies around on dick rockets.
I can’t tell you your definitions are wrong, because they are your definitions, but I can explain mine and where they come from. Your upbringing, to me, sounds like “The American Dream,” which you rightly acknowledge isn’t accessible to enough people. But to me, that sounds like what “middle class” should be. That should be where you can be if you work your job for your salary and are within the realm of the reasonable with your money. That used to be attainable on one income if you were white, but it should be accessible to basically everyone on two incomes.
I see classes less with respect to overall income distribution and more with respect to living status. It’s why terms like “the shrinking middle class” make sense. Tautologically there are as many people in the middle of the income distribution as ever, but those people aren’t living the middle class lifestyle.
So, like
Poverty: unhoused or struggling to maintain regular housing
Lower class: housed, but struggling to make ends meet. Getting by, but a big medical or other unplanned bill could have them out of doors.
Middle class: Housed and basically comfortable, often owning a home unless in very expensive markets. Can afford usual essentials and absorb some downswings. Can afford some degree of creature comforts like annual modest domestic vacations and occasional dining out.
Professional class: Usually high wage earners or business owners who have to work in their own business. Can afford nicer homes, potentially private schooling for kids, more expensive car payments, but also prone to whining about how they don’t have much money left after all they’ve spent on recurring but ultimately optional expenses.
Gentry: the lower ownership class. Owns at least one business or at least a big portfolio of stonks, although this is where many professional athletes and performers sit. Doesn’t really have to do actual work unless they want to.
Filthy rich: your multi multi millionaires and billionaires who have more money than most people would know what to do with. Generational wealth.
So, while upper middle class can reasonably describe people on the upper half but not tail of whatever the current income distribution looks like, it also means a certain life station to me, and drawing a few more lines might clear things up.
To add, obviously wealth is a continuum rather than discrete bins, and also, it’s obvious that one’s choice of place to live impacts lifestyle. I don’t really buy into the idea that a family making $250k but choosing to rent in Manhattan is “middle class,” even though their housing may mirror renters in less expensive cities. They’re clearly professional class with different buying preferences. Same if someone wants a fancier car instead of a bigger house, or to take more vacations. People may have different housing preferences within their class, but it’s more about the ability to have a certain kind of housing, and whether you’re working for someone or if you have people working for you.
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my great great grandpa was born a slave in louisiana, so by any objective metric I’m a roaring american experiment success, until you realize I’m also the whitest person in that lineage it’s a bit sadder.
pretty much every person here is incredibly privileged and lots of us still don’t even have it that great compared to others, which is why it’s so hard to swallow, at least for me. it shouldnt be a privilege to have a stable house and food to eat and have education and healthcare, but that’s privileged here.
Yeah, I agree with this, but I also feel like there’s a big gap between most of us here (middle and professional in my tiering) and the gentry and above. As good as I have it, I have to keep working, and I can’t guarantee the financial stability of my kids no matter how much they may fuck up. That’s why I think, drawing a few more tiers than the usual four (lower, middle, upper middle, and upper) is illustrative. Professionals have a lot more in common with the lower class than with the gentry, in general, so I think painting some higher tiers can help salaried people see that it’s the gentry and filthy rich that are the targets, and they aren’t caught up in the frenzy with people to be guillotined.