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I don't really know how the different economic classes are defined. It seems like everyone who isn't either wealthy or homeless likes to believe that they're middle or upper-middle class. I'd argue that if you can't afford a home, you're low or lower-middle class.
This is not meant to be a judgement against people who can't afford homes. If anything, I'm just pointing out the horrible income inequality and how the "vanishing middle class" has indeed vanished, to a large extent.
I don’t really know how the different economic classes are defined. It seems like everyone who isn’t either wealthy or homeless likes to believe that they’re middle or upper-middle class.
And that's by design. "Middle class" is pretty much a propaganda term. In reality there's only two classes: working class and owner class.
Yeah the real story is what was the middle class is now lower and upper class is now middle and you have to be wealthy to be upper. ie - modest stand alone houses are doctor/lawyer territory and having a mcmansion is like business owners.
The middle class is the middle three household income quintiles.
From the study:
There’s no single definition of the middle class, but one of the most go-to benchmarks is Pew Research’s household income percentile ranges for economic classes, which go as follows:
- Lower-middle class: 20th - 40th percentile
- Middle class: 40th - 60th percentile
- Upper-middle class: 60th - 80th percentile
Based on these percentile ranges, America’s “middle class” households fall into three main income tiers:
- Lower-middle class: $30,001—$58,020
- Middle class: $58,021—$94,000
- Upper-middle class: $94,001—$153,000
Given the purchasing power of $100k, I feel like those numbers are woefully out of date. Not saying you're wrong, only that the numbers themselves need to be reevaluated in light of what has happened in the last 5 years (and started well before that).
Otherwise, "middle class" is meaningless because it doesn't represent purchasing power, only an arbitrary number.
Yea, as someone whose household income falls into that listed upper middle, is fairly frugal, and lives in a relatively lower cost area... I still feel on the low end of middle class. Everything is so expensive, it's hard to get ahead no matter what you do these days.
I know what you mean. I'm not hurting and I live a good life. But what I could have done with this kind of money just 5 or 10 years ago is far greater than now. Not just inflationary greater. It's almost like the kinds of things that only went up only as much as inflation are luxuries. Everything in the bottom tier of Maslow's Hierarchy except air and sleep seemed to get way more expensive than inflation can account for.
Or I'm just getting old and miss getting gas for $0.79
Just tells me I've been nothing but poor my entire life
Generally the definitions i’ve seen economists use is that the middle class is defined as people who earn the majority of their money from an actual salary instead of stocks, either as bonuses or from investments, and as such are working class and not part of the ownership class, but who can also lose their job and have six months of savings to comfortably find a new one and as such are not poor either.