[betterprojects]

We can barely agree on what the definition of middle class is. A quick search shows one source quoting anywhere between $48,500 to $145,500 a year which is a very broad range. Part of this is cost of living varies significantly in different parts of the US. With the current average salary, average home price, and current interest rates, people aren't wrong that housing is very unaffordable in most places.

[wesselbindt]

The notion of "middle class" is a convenient propaganda piece. Turns out most folks consider themselves middle class. So as a politician, you can score easy points by saying scary stuff like "the middle class is disappearing" or "I'm here to help the middle class". The moment you start using more meaningful classifications (for example proletariat, which has a precise definition), you alienate some part of your voterbase. I guess with a term like proletariat there's also the fact that it's one of the scary words that the bad people use, which might turn off voters.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> The notion of "middle class" is a convenient propaganda piece. Turns out most folks consider themselves middle class.

Yup. I've met people living paycheck-to-paycheck, never having much more than 1 paycheck's worth of money in their bank account, that think they're middle class. Shit, I've seen people that are on food stamps that think they're middle class.

The worst part is that so many of them will vote against their own best interests because they think they'll be millionaires one day.

[benreesman]

When I was young in the days of yore, “middle class” was something like “median household income”, maybe a bit more but not double, which got you a 30-year fixed in a part of town that was safe but not swanky, and was easily had by a worker with a college education or trade, or a hard worker, great saver, without.

“Upper middle class” was your doctors and lawyers, but the typical kind (the 100-week partner guy was fucking “RICH”). They had nice houses in desirable parts of town.

“Lower middle class” were workers without differentiated skills or educated folks with really bad money habits / some other issue like that. With my folks it was some college but dropped out to start a family (have me), got in tax trouble young. Lower middle class almost always rented forever.

“Poor” was like, no skills or flat lazy, or conspicuous drug problem, or something like that. They rented in bad parts of town. But rented.

That’s context or color, not numbers. But we were “the poor relations” relative to the spiffy college graduates or the folks with two incomes, and had IRS trouble, and rented in unglamorous but perfectly nice places.

Sounds crazy now.

[ryandrake]

I always thought all that numerous stratification into "upper middle class" and "lower middle class" and "upper lower middle class" and "lower middle upper middle class" and so on was kind of pointless and only serves to either 1. satisfy people who feel the need to precisely identify their own position on the totem pole or 2. pits people against each other who are actually in the same class and should be fighting together.

Most of us are N missed paychecks away from being broke. For some, that N is 1 or 2, for some it's 5, for retirees, the number may be even larger; but we all inevitably need money from our labor to come in in order to live. And this is true regardless of the dollar amount on that paycheck. We're all in the same boat.

For a very few lucky people, that N is infinite because their money grows faster than they can spend it. They get richer just by existing.

To me, these are really the only two meaningful economic classes. Do you have to work for your living or not?

[genman]

Middle class is anybody who is not poor and not rich.

So it is clear from this definition that the lower bound for it is income of $48,500 from what you are not considered poor anymore and upper bound is income of $145,500 from what you are considered rich.

Now the most important consideration is - if a person can't afford a home, then can they really considered to be not poor?

[spywaregorilla]

income cannot define social class by definition.

I would say its rather backwards. Thinking of things as lower class seeks to afford rent, middle class seeks to afford housing, and upper class is beyond it. House ownership is basically the cornerstone of class wealth in the US. Prehaps with secondary lower/middle/upper modifiers your degree of success there (e.g. upper middle class comfortably affords their house, but it's still the bulk of their wealth; lower lower cannot reliably afford rent)

[skywhopper]

Those numbers are probably the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quintiles of household income. ie, the middle 60%, so that’s a large swath but it seems reasonable to me.