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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. |
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.