Way less than 2% is rich IMO

You've got a real strange worldview

OK?

senorkeeed going hard for hillary clinton's views on what is rich.

Are you shocked because a husband and wife meter maid duo can't afford those things?

I specifically didn't give income because it isn't the really what separates the classes. But examples of common differences:

people who grow up middle class or below often end up with significant student debt, upper middle class and above don't.

the upper middle class never need financial help in retirement from their kids regardless of health/longevity/need for nursing home and usually leave money, middle class and below may need some support and usually don't leave much.

the upper middle class can give their kids enough money to where they can never work and be very close to dead center middle class

I would just call those people wealthy. They often can stop working without a dip in their lifestyle, often make large contributions to charity, can give enough to where their kids can live a wealthy or upper middle class lifestyle without working etc


These are irrelevant. I didn't invent these terms and they weren't made to break the population into income bins, they were made to describe certain lifestyles. I'm just telling you what people mean when they say upper middle class. And again, a cop and his receptionist wife are not what people have in mind when they say upper middle class.

In other words, 'screw your percentages and whatnot, "upper-middle class" goes strictly by this set of preconceived notions that I have AND THAT'S FINAL.' Go ahead and think what you want.

You also think there's no distinction between upper-middle and upper class. Cool. Again, not using any specific measure, just a set of arbitrary benchmarks that you thought sounded good inside your head and fit your strange aforementioned preconceived notions.

You realize you're just describing how phrases like "upper middle class" are created and assigned meaning in the first place, right? There isn't some board of class distinction that looks at the bureau of labor statistics data and rigorously defines the classes for us.

We all define the term based on preconceived notions. I think most people are referring to the things I'm talking about rather than just somebody that makes more than 70% of the population.

That's weird, because you and Keed are getting solidly lol'd at by most of the posters here.

But keep throwing out bull**** like meter reader + receptionist make $120K/yr

Lol ikes. This is trivially true. You don't say somebody is upper middle class because you've seen their W2 and know exactly how income percentiles are broken dpwn. The vast majority of people who use the phrase upper middle class to describe somebody don't even know how much that person makes. The only thing they are basing it on is their lifestyle.

Most=You and Ikes?

The jobs are admittedly exaggerated. But meant to illustrate that 120k for a married couple with kids doesn't really jive as an above middle class lifesyle. But rather comfortably/entrenched in the middle class. Something like 60k combined would be middle class in alot of places, but with a much higher chance of falling into below middle class due to bad luck etc.

I think you need to maybe explain the lifestyle separations between upper middle class and just middle class. We gave income estimates even though we don't think thats really what its about.

It just seems ridiculous to me that Max considers a family with ****ing live-in help to be anything other than rich.

Working poor imo

Sweet! Free lunch and breakfast for my kid, and all the kids in the school district, this year!
In before it's not free but, by the gods of kobol, really a shortage.

Lol, I think you have done this twice now. Does America have three classes:
Upper
Middle
Poor

?

Everywhere else in the world has working class. They also don't use dumb salary measures which distort things and use lifestyle instead. Max is essentially right.

125k/yr=UMC is probably the dumbest thing ever though. Especially since I'm sure Ikes had defined rich as some mega high salary before.

Does this mean ppl making less than seven figures get food stamps? I'm all in favor of that.

Depends on where the family lives. Cost of living in NYC or San Francisco is a lot more than the cost of living in Tulsa, OK. A decent indicator is govt per diem rates. In Tulsa we're talking $136 a day and in NYC it's $300 a day more or less. No way a family of 4 making $120,000 in Tulsa is equivalent to that same family making $120,000 on Manhatten. I think Max lives in NYC.

No one is saying that the two are equivalent though. Regardless, NYTimes says 120k is top 19% in NY metro area.

Upper-middle class =/= rich

Nobody is saying that 125k/yr is rich

While Max's views are obviously ludicrous for anyone who isn't a character in a Jane Austen novel (UMC = sufficient dynastic wealth for your children to be members of the rentier aristocracy), it's a helpful reminder that all discussion of class is basically an organizing framework for snobbishness. UMC is your kind of people, the truly wealthy are your social betters, and the merely middle class are your inferiors. It's totally relative and Max is very rich, so of course his idea of UMC is utterly distorted. (People who aren't rich use the simple three-class framework of lower, middle, and upper to direct their snobbery.)

In the end, anyone who makes more than 150 is rich, and I don't really care about all the DO YOU EXPECT ME TO LIVE IN QUEENS, LIKE AN ANIMAL?! whining.

Max is pretend very rich.... he doesn't know why someone would polish their shoes.

I certainly wish we brought in 120k so that I could bump up to middle class. Guess I'll just have to remain somewhere here in the 50-something percentile like the rest of the poors. Living in suburban areas and driving honda civics. Idk how I'm going to break this vicious cycle. Guess I need to find a meter-reading job.

Like he shows a distinct lack of awareness for how the majority of the nation lives and works. Try leaving Manhattan once in awhile and look around.

You peasants seem awfully rustled over all this...

Again, this is not the point. Studying the proles is a job for anthropologists. Class boundaries are for figuring who's better and worse than you. Anyone who doesn't spend most of their time in Manhattan or San Francisco is almost automatically middle class at best anyways.