[anovikov]

I think it's some definition of 'middle class' coming from the 1970s and never inflation-adjusted since then. A person making $35K is anything but a middle class in every place i seen, let alone Silicon Valley. Maybe, a lower middle in totally clapped out East European countries like Ukraine.

[patio11]

$35k is solidly middle class in Japan (corresponds pretty much exactly to the expected income of a salaryman and his wife during their family's formative years) and in wide swathes of the US, particularly non-metro areas. Representative occupations would include, e.g., early-career public school teachers, public servants, car salesmen, police officers, etc, etc.

[billyjobob]

The American English definition of 'middle class' is bizarre and seems to include anyone who has a job and isn't homeless. The correct English meaning of the word is someone who works for themselves rather than a boss in a profession which has a guild to ensure exclusivity, e.g. doctor or lawyer. Or the owner of a small business which employs other people. It's mostly inherited upon birth and has little to do with income. For example the son of a doctor will be born middle class and will maintain that status even if he becomes a wage labourer working for an employer. After perhaps 20 years of wage labour he may then consider he has fallen into the working class. Similarly someone who wins millions on the lottery will never really be 'upper class' because they weren't born of aristocratic stock, although if they maintain their wealth while avoiding work then their children might be.

The people in Silicon Valley working for others are working class.

[laurencerowe]

A doctor or barrister would be upper middle class. Working in most other jobs requiring a university education would definitely make you middle class in England.

While the American definition of "middle class" is best translated as "working class" into English English, it seems far from bizarre given it covers someone making the median income.

[eaurouge]

I think it's bizarre that in England your status in society is based mostly on whether you won or lost the birth lottery.

[DanBC]

Do you think it's bizarre that it is more true for the US?

EDIT: accidentally downvoted you. Sorry.

[eaurouge]

I don't think it's more true in the US. It's easier to get into the best universities in the US than it is in the UK. If you manage to make it, (for the most part) no one cares who your parents or grand parents were. In the UK these things matter to the point of absurdity. In the UK, the system was rigged centuries ago; here in the US our rigged system is still very much in its infancy, relatively speaking of course.

[barry-cotter]

I'm pretty sure the US super elite schools (HYPS) do not cover as much of the population as the UK super elite schools (Oxbridge). I believe it's something like 1-2% for the UK and 0.4% for the US. I may misremember the components (i.e. it may be for merely elite schools, like the Russell Group or the rest of the Ivy League plus MIT and Cal Tech etc.)

Super elite term taken from Lauren Rivera's "Ivies, Extracurriculars, and Exclusion"

[waterlesscloud]

You can live middle-classly on 40-60k in most of America still.

Techies seem to be anxious to claim middle-class status, but if you're in a 6-figure household family, you're still pushing upper class compared to nearly anywhere.

And the statistical fact is that if you're $250 k in the US in household income, you are in fact the 1%.

[Element_]

There was a segment on PBS news hour yesterday that mentioned police officers in California are making 100-250k+ a year and are able to retire with 6 figure pensions & full union benefits. I think most people would class policing as a middle class job.

[patio11]

About $400k, actually.

[waterlesscloud]

Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011.

Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.

[patio11]

There exists a lot of literature about class, which is a very fluid term. I think to the extent that people react really negatively when you suggest $100k is upper class, they're reacting to other associations they have with that term. For example, educational attainment or social advantage are also class markers, and many people at $100k won't particularly have them. For another, material advantages of being wealthy are, at many locales, absolutely unobtainable at only $100k a year. House ownership is a major one. International travel is another one that is high on the SWPL list, which many people who are doing well for themselves at $100k a year will not find themselves able to consume. (Chiefly, because in return for that $100k they've committed themselves to a career track which doesn't tolerate 2 week vacations very well.)

FWIW, there's a lot of talk in the United States since about 1970 or so of there being a "professional class", which has education and income markedly higher than the traditional middle class but which has lifestyles which resemble middle class more than the traditional upper classes. It was traditionally filled full of doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Engineers are entering the professional class, which discomfits a lot of people.

[clarkm]

The fluidity of a term like "middle class" really does muddle conversations. That's why SWPL is one of my favorite neologisms. The fact there is a definitive list of SWPL characteristics makes it so much more descriptive than other, more ambiguous terms like yuppie.

[patio11]

It's great, right?

For folks who are confused by this: SWPL is the acronym for Stuff White People Like, which is a blog. It basically described (by means of caricature) an emerging social class in America of urban, socially liberal, upper middle class professionals. Kinda like "yuppie" but with acid tests more appropriate to 2012.

"SWPL" has subsequently been appropriated to describe that social class by commentators on the Internet. It's not a perfect map to the territory but fits it closely enough to have significant predictive power.

[waterlesscloud]

I fully realize that objectively wealthy people want to perceive themselves as middle class.

But come on, the fact that your career path doesn't tolerate 2 week vacations doesn't move you down the percentile ladder.

As far as your last paragraph, that's my point. If you're making six figures, you're "rich" in America, still, whether you want to accept it or not.

To think you're not is to be very, very out of touch.

[jedmeyers]

There is a big difference between making 100k in salary and 100k from investments. If you have to work to put food on the table then you are definitely not the upper class. I have read about a good middle class marker recently - if you have or will have a mortgage, then you are middle class. Upper class don't need one and lower class won't get approved for one.

[anovikov]

A class is not about what you can buy, or what people think of you. It is about SOURCE of your income, not where it ends up.

The concept of class was invented by Karl Marx, a person belongs to some class based on his/her relation to the means of production. There are 3 factors of production: labor, capital, and land (that final one is of much less importance now than it used to be in Marx's era, but still). So there are classes: middle class are those deriving their income from work (rent on their labor), rich deriving their income from capital, and aristocrates deriving their income from land (these are now extinct). Poor are those who don't have any means of production, so they depend on social transfers like foodstamps. Of course these sources can mix in a single person - like a coder who rents out spare bedroom on airbnb, or a top manager who has some stock of the company he runs in addition to salary and bonuses, and gets some dividends on it - but the largest one 'wins'.

Because the IRS collects sources of income of people (because they are differently taxed), and publishes summary of its results, it is possible to make a very precise picture of American class structure/thresholds of classes. It is just that nobody likes these results.

[clarkm]

> The concept of class was invented by Karl Marx, a person belongs to some class based on his/her relation to the means of production.

Please. Class and caste have been around since the dawn of civilization.

[anovikov]

It was 350K in 2009, in the midst of a crisis (incomes of people like that have a lot to do with performance-based bonuses, stock appreciation and the like, so they dipped a lot in the crisis, much more than oridinary people's). In 2012 it was already $560K.

And the definition for upper class as being top 1% is arbitrary, it is in fact invented by Obama during his first presidential campaign, solely for finger-pointing (he could safely say 1% is not many people so they won't impact election results enough and safe to be finger-pointed).

Upper class are ought to be people who don't derive their income from work, but from their property - business profits, stock dividends, rent etc. - in all societies upper class are those who DON'T depend on salary, and many of them don't work at all. So it is natural to define upper class income threshold as a point above which less than 50% of income comes from employment. In the present United States, this is about 3-4 million bucks a year per household. This will be economically defined upper class, not just some 'people rich enough to hate them'. So McCain was closer to reality back in 2008 is his upper class definition.

I personally don't know anyone making that much, but i can safely say that all people i know making 150-1000k a year will be broke months or at most, a year or two if they stop working, with one exception (a guy living in East Asia with about 400k of annual income, who never married or had kids). So they are not upper class. And i am speaking of the places which are cheaper and have lower living standards than USA.

[waterlesscloud]

"Upper class is people other than us."

Go ahead, enter your household income here, find out where you really fall.

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-yo...

Hint- if you're a techie in SF, you're reaaaaallll near the top.

[anovikov]

Hahaha it shows percentiles above 100% for income above 220k for women and 450k for men (both unmarried and living alone = all 3 figures equal) - that javascript is broken.

[klipt]

US rank isn't very informative though. It doesn't take into account cost of living, or (assuming they're using pre-tax salary) even the difference in state taxes.

A comfortable salary in Houston would be much less comfortable in San Francisco because you're suddenly paying 10% of your income to state taxes and paying 4x as much rent.

[nilkn]

Where are you pulling your numbers from? $500k is higher than any I've seen quoted from a reliable source.

[__xtrimsky]

130k here, I feel lower middle class.

I can't buy a house in NY. I'll have to move upstate for that. I have only one car, second car would be a little bit hard.

[icelancer]

$35K is doing just fine in Cleveland, OH.