Wait, are you guys trolling me or being serious? Because I agree, it's pathetic that 2 people with entry level jobs can be in the top 25%. In fact, this is a great example of the loltasticness of income inequality. It's so bad it is laughable.

Yes, 50% of people are in horrific shape. 50k is just really low income. Don't get me wrong, you can make it work if you live in rural environment, but any type of metro area and you're in serious trouble.

I guess I should consider myself really lucky, but I don't "feel" all that damn lucky. I've never owned a brand new car. I dunno, maybe I'm doing something ****ing wrong.

It is just like really anything in life, the really good stuff requires long term planning and sacrifice. Like having kids really sucks for the first couple of years. You're taking care of a constantly crying, ****ting, pissing thing that can't communicate. And being a parent really limits what you can do with your free time. But if you are an engaged parent nothing will be more rewarding as the years pass.

Same deal with money and careers. It absolutely ****ing sucks to work your ass off to be a doctor or lawyer or programmer or whatever only to discover that after servicing your student loans you have to live in a **** apartment in a **** neighborhood while saving nothing. But if you just keep your head down and make good decisions by age 50 or so you'll be in good shape with some truly rewarding achievements. By 60 or 65 you'll have complete financial freedom, giving you 15-20 years to do whatever the hell you want knowing your children won't have to support you.

Now, if you are smart and motivated and that deal isn't attractive to you, you'll have to be an entrepreneur. Which is of course incredibly risky and may mean never being financially secure.

Didn't Santorum beg for that to be taken down? (Santorum.com)

Really the takeaway should be
1. Don't have kids.
2. Don't be afraid to live near minorities.
If you can do both those things, you can live fairly comfortably on most full-time incomes. If you can't, then the idealized American middle class lifestyle is going to be virtually unattainable for most of your life.

fyp, though it was implied with your #2.

b

I'd love to see statistics on the correlation between people who think 100k isn't rich and people who think welfare recipients are living the easy life and feasting on lobster.

With some variable adjusting, this may be attainable using some of the questions from the General Social Survey.

b

I have no idea if you're trolling or not, but wow. Basically a bunch of whiny, entitled people ITT with no regard for reality. Was my first time in Politics, will be my last lol.

The vast majority of people in this thread don't agree with me. As far as being whiny and entitled, lol? Where are you getting that idea from? If that's all it takes for you to be turned off by the Politics forum, you're right, people like you should stay out of it. It gets much worse.

the only people who think 100k isn't rich are the people making 100k who claim to be middle class, the same way people making 15k claim to be middle class, the same way people making 250k claim to be middle class, the same way...

Lol @ a $100k salary being rich in the US in 2014. Truly one of the most absurd things I've ever read.

Being able to own a home, drive a new Honda Accord, and take a couple of vacations a year doesn't make you rich. It makes you normal.

I'll never understand these arguments. Starting salaries out of college are what? 45-55k in a decent paying field? After 2 promotions and 10-15 years experience, what do you expect your salary to be when looking for a new job? You think after starting at, say, 50k, after 10 years and 2 promotions you should be making 80k? That making 100k is some mythical ridiculously high salary that no one deserves to make?

This sentiment is absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who can do a decent job at work and be able to get promoted in decent amounts of time (2 promotions in 10 years) should be able to achieve these numbers, or very close to them. I'm 38 years old. I'm actually behind quite a few of my peers. If you are lucky enough to marry someone who has the same type of career path, then boom, when you are around 35 years old you should magically be making 200k!

wtf? I'm sorry I'm not the produce manager at Superfresh.

Pretty sure the people making 100k and claim to be middle class greatly outnumber those who make 15k making the same claim.


Wow, it's like it's the 70s all over again...

Who knew social mobility was so high nowadays and job security is rampant.

People just need to work a little harder...

<I can see why you don't understand some of these arguments>

b

You are not even talking about what it means to be rich at all.

Being employed and having disposable income has nothing to do with any reasonable definition of what the term rich means. You seem to imply that not being poor = rich.

No one in the US with a $100k salary would classify themselves as rich*.

*excluding people who were already wealthy before taking their current job.

Yeah but if you live in a shack in rural North Dakota and eat fried spam every night, you'll be rich! You are freely choosing to pay for all those big-city "luxuries" like having other humans around, having some jobs available within a 90 minute commute, and oh yeah maybe even a movie theater and a restaurant.

The funny thing is I knew what it was like making 29k. That was my starting salary 9 years ago. Back then, I thought "man, if I could just make 60k one day, I'll be good", then 60 came and went, and I never had that "now I'm good" feeling, and I still don't.

Once again - 10k watches, 100k cars, 800k homes, vacation houses, are not in the budget for a family of 4 making 200k. All of those things I'd consider rich people to have. I have none of those things.

You're in for some serious disappointment in life.

Well, why doesn't everyone just get a basic entry-level job, a couple of raises, and then boom! 100K salary! Easy!

100K is not rich, that's clearly true. But let's not act like that's middle-of-the-road. It's not even close

You're right. My response to the first poster was about claims of middle class.

My second response was addressing the illusion of how easy it is to achieve mid class status.

Nowhere did I address 100k as rich. Thanks for recapping that.

That said, in most places in the US,if you're making 100k, you're doing pretty damn good.

b

100K is 94th percentile on the individual salary distribution

In all honesty, look at any entry level professional position, then look 2-3 positions above that. What are the salaries at those levels? I'd bet its right around 100k. That's usually 10 years experience. I get your point that it might not be that easy, but it's not something nearly as close to as mythically impossible as people make it out to be.

Just because middle of the road is awful doesn't make better than awful something great.

No, and its highly highly dependent on the field and nature of the work

and if you don't get laid off.

and if they don't outsource/insource your job within 5-10 years

b

I can see how a subject like this would have a tendency to devolve into nothing but hyperbole on both sides, so I appreciate your objectivity here.

I understand what you are saying, and your points are valid. That said, I think that for most neighborhoods/communities that would typically and accurately be described as "middle-class", a $100k household income does indeed put you in the middle-of-the-road. It certainly doesn't put you far ahead of the proverbial Jones' in any of the places that I'm familiar with.

I also believe that the term upper-middle-class denotes more than simply being comfortable, or being able to pay your bills on time. Maybe it's semantics at this point, but this is how I use the term and also my interpretation of what others mean when they use the term.

This isn't normal at all. Must be nice to be you though since you think it is.

as others have said, the old way of get this job and work up the ladder and get promoted along the way retire on a nice package just isn't true anymore. (many of the retiring guys jobs simply never get replaced, robots on production lines, and ofc outsourcing, restructuring meaning you just lost your job/etc etc etc)

Granted I live in Lincoln, NE, but 100K individual salary puts you quite decently ahead of basically everyone. We all know that geography is a big part of the equation, but not every metro is super-expensive, and not every metro has inflated salaries. Places like Austin or Columbus or Omaha are really cheap. I fully understand that if you're in the NYC metro, a 120K household income might buy you the same amount of house and car that 70 or 80K might buy here. But in the majority of this country, a $100K salary is very hard to achieve, and many people in this thread are trivializing that fact in favor of "well BART workers in SF make 110K/yr" or other extreme outliers have have little bearing on categorizing the other 99.9% of America