Are you middle class?

[atarianna]

I thought we were middle class, but are upper class. Especially for our area.

[idahome]

While our income has us in the middle class realm, we do not have the security that middle class typically brings (no savings and not on track for retirement).

Between student loan debt and the mortgage I feel like I can’t breathe.

And I firmly feel like I make great money - I just don’t have a partner who makes good money or is willing to do the hard things to get us to where we should be.

[ESF]

I think the reason why many rich people "feel" middle class is because the dependence on a job rather than accumulated or generational wealth for most or all of your financial security is something that they have in common with the middle class. Things like job loss or a severe medical crisis could make it all go away very quickly -- maybe not as fast, but still fast enough.

Very high earning people are of course rich and should maintain perspective. But I think it's somewhat of a newer phenomenon to have so many "rich" families who depend on two full time, healthy workers to maintain that status.

[gottadobe]

Above middle class. But behind on retirement savings, so perhaps that is why we don't feel that way.

[jamaicam]

I know that I am in the top 5% of government employees in my country, and that probably puts me in the top 20% overall.

Hwoever, by US standards, I am poor not even Middle class.

[moreace01]

Class - no we are not middle class if we base this on current salary.

As for socieconomic status, we live in a very affluent area. We do not roll with these people at all and are very much outsiders to that way of life. Fwiw, I guess. I'm sure that's discussed somewhere in this thread.

[pinkdutchtulips]

Yes but skewed to the lower end thanks to being in one of the most expensive areas in the US (SF/Bay Area). I was only able to start retirement savings in earnest 10y ago bc that's when my income jumped to a point where I could do that and not feel the pinch which means I'm not on track as to where I should be. Likewise, e-fund ?!?, I don't have one of those. I pray emergencies don't pop up and when they do, payment plans are a necessity. 

[wawa]

I would be curious to know what the academic/policy wonk take is on the usefulness of discussing the current status of things in terms of class. We're constantly adjusting language when we're talking about various populations to avoid negative connotations or overly broad language (or conversely lack of inclusivity) [example - how we talk about people with disabilities], but this thing where we talk about socioeconomic classes as if they're meaningful and useful distinctions to modern policy conversations persists despite a RAFTLOAD of baggage around the terminology that really derails half the conversations. (or provides handy political cover where people read in what they want to hear)

It feels...outdated. Like in a "oh please don't mind my racist grandma. she's from a different time" way. especially because who the fuck ever calls somebody lower class in a neutral way?

(that said, to check the box, no I'm not middle class by the numbers at all. I knew that already.)

[tiramisu]

I'm middle class, which blows my mind because when I was younger, I thought a salary like what I have now would make me rich. Too many years of being underpaid and that mentality doesn't go away easily.

Per the WaPo link, I'm in the middle 60% of incomes in my area, close to the median income but still below it.

[mysteriouswife]

Smack dab in the middle of middle class. If it were just my income I would not fall middle class

[redheadbaker]

Lower middle class, below average for our zip code. About what I expected.

[W.T.Faulkner]

We are middle for the zip code, which was thrilling. This is an affluent area and we bought our house just at the right time. We wouldn’t be able to buy here now, I don’t think.

[pixy0stix]

Jun 7, 2023 14:22:47 GMT -5 wawa said:

I would be curious to know what the academic/policy wonk take is on the usefulness of discussing the current status of things in terms of class. We're constantly adjusting language when we're talking about various populations to avoid negative connotations or overly broad language (or conversely lack of inclusivity) [example - how we talk about people with disabilities], but this thing where we talk about socioeconomic classes as if they're meaningful and useful distinctions to modern policy conversations persists despite a RAFTLOAD of baggage around the terminology that really derails half the conversations. (or provides handy political cover where people read in what they want to hear)

It feels...outdated. Like in a "oh please don't mind my racist grandma. she's from a different time" way. especially because who the fuck ever calls somebody lower class in a neutral way?

(that said, to check the box, no I'm not middle class by the numbers at all. I knew that already.)

I can't remember where I heard it, but there's a truism that the only people that don't talk about money/class are the ones that have it.


www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/listen/201712/when-students-talk-about-wealth-and-class

[EvieEthelGarland]

What are we calling "upper middle?" The site didn't specify but I guess that's where I fall ($15k from WaPo saying we're not middle class).

What gets me is we have salaries that individually would have have us on the lower end of middle class, but in the 80s, just one paycheck would rate as UMC. All our needs are met and lot of our wants, but growing up I anticipated driving a Lexus, not a Nissan, at my age with 20 years of working under my belt. Still, I am not complaining--I know we are fortunate and a lot of that is our parents paying for college. I hope we're able to do the same but I doubt my kid will be able to have the same lifestyle in the PacNW. Are we downgrading "middle class" markers as time goes on?

[sonrisa]

No.

And yes - according to that we meet 2 out of 3 criteria and are below average for our specific zip code. So. Still "no" big picture since our location is warped. 

[wawa]

Jun 8, 2023 14:38:16 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Jun 7, 2023 14:22:47 GMT -5 wawa said:

I would be curious to know what the academic/policy wonk take is on the usefulness of discussing the current status of things in terms of class. We're constantly adjusting language when we're talking about various populations to avoid negative connotations or overly broad language (or conversely lack of inclusivity) [example - how we talk about people with disabilities], but this thing where we talk about socioeconomic classes as if they're meaningful and useful distinctions to modern policy conversations persists despite a RAFTLOAD of baggage around the terminology that really derails half the conversations. (or provides handy political cover where people read in what they want to hear)

It feels...outdated. Like in a "oh please don't mind my racist grandma. she's from a different time" way. especially because who the fuck ever calls somebody lower class in a neutral way?

(that said, to check the box, no I'm not middle class by the numbers at all. I knew that already.)

I can't remember where I heard it, but there's a truism that the only people that don't talk about money/class are the ones that have it.


www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/listen/201712/when-students-talk-about-wealth-and-class

I feel like the way this paragraph is written is a good example of why I asked this question - Three students and three teachers participated: one middle-class female student of color, an Asian female student of middle-class background, and a white male student from a local family of significant wealth. The three teachers consisted of a white male teacher and a male teacher of color who were both of middle-class backgrounds and a white female teacher who self-identified as lower-middle-class. 

They don't refer to the rich kid as upper class, and they included the qualifier of "self-identified" for the lower class I assume because it reads as an insult to a lot of people without it.  And those ticks in how we use those terms just keeps setting "middle class" up as "normal" so then all the 200k+ HHI folks still think of themselves there even if they're pushing the 5% for their region. 

Like...I write reports that talk about the demographics of places all the time. we don't try to ID populations by class, we just go straight to talking about where they fall in income percentiles if that's what we mean to talk about. Because there's zero way to get around the fact that if we said, "oh x neighborhood is primarily middle class, but y neighborhood is lower class" it's going to be percieved to be saying a fuckton more than we might mean.  Maybe it wasn't clear, but I'm specifically not asking about general day to day conversation - I'm talking about in academic or policy or technical settings, and we have enough of the right flavor of nerds here that I thought somebody might have some insight as to whether this is a thing that's discussed.

Middle class is the only one we can apply to people without hurt feelings, and then if people have such a hard time grasping what middle class even MEANS, then shouldn't any detailed discussion about wealth and income probably just be using different, more precise and less loaded language?  Terminology that so often gets used as coded language by politicians "good middle-class american values!" feels like a weird way to seriously try to quantify income inequities or privilege due to accumulated family wealth when we have better words to use.  

[aletheia]

Jun 2, 2023 16:30:12 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Another old timey question from the depths of this board - are you middle class?

WaPo has an insanely good calculator for this (gift link) - wapo.st/3ITrzaH

Please only answer after doing the above.

I didn't use the calculator because I inherited sufficient wealth, that I'd hesitate being explicit about it on a random internet website.   Let's just say that I've never needed to work a day in my life.

I've worked anyway... because I wanted to, not because I had to.   And only at jobs which appealed to me - for many years I was a teacher (mathematics, 8-18 year olds).

But I don't live in America.   In the country I live in, social class isn't determined purely by financial matters, even comparative to the other people in your area.

It's also about social and cultural capital (eg accent, type of education, tastes and pasttimes, what you drink, style of clothing)






When you plot these three types of capital on three separate axes and look for groupings, you get a far more interesting result:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kingdom#Results

[msmerymac]

aletheia, It was so interesting when Fiona Hill was testifying in Congress during Trump's first impeachment and talked about how, as someone who grew up in an impoverished mining area in Northeast England, there were opportunities open to her career-wise in America that just weren't in the UK due to her background and accent. I read her memoir earlier this year and she honestly didn't go to Oxbridge (she went to St Andrews) partially because of the class stuff - not knowing how to move among those people, the impression she gave in her interview, not having earlier opportunities to socialize in those circles. And that she often got the question about what her dad did for work (he was a former miner, then a hospital orderly).

There are certainly social implications that have to do with gaining admission to the Ivy League and the success people may have there, but not to the systemic extent it appears to happen in the UK in business and government.

[nsl]

Jun 8, 2023 13:49:03 GMT -5 W.T.Faulkner said:

We are middle for the zip code, which was thrilling. This is an affluent area and we bought our house just at the right time. We wouldn’t be able to buy here now, I don’t think.

Housing prices absolutely skyrocketed in my area shortly before we purchased our house in 2020, and they've continued to go up since then to the point where we also wouldn't be able to afford our home (and possibly not this neighborhood at all, which is wild to me since this was not an expensive part of town at all when I was growing up) if we were buying today. According to the calculator we're significantly above the median in our neighborhood income-wise, but I also know that most of our neighbors purchased their homes 10+ years ago when housing was much more affordable here.

All of which is to say that while I was under no illusions about being truly middle class given our HHI, so much of our income goes towards our mortgage payment that it "feels" like we're on pace with the rest of our neighborhood income-wise even though that's demonstrably not true.

[kitty79]

I am but I just do all my best to be better.Right now I am actively trying to open my own  e-company in Estonia.In discussing the topic of "Estonia company formation" in relation to determining one's middle-class status, it's worth considering that the middle class can vary across different regions and countries. While Estonia offers favorable conditions for company formation, defining one's middle-class status usually relies on a range of factors beyond just business ownership. These details, such as income, education, and lifestyle, collectively contribute to the middle-class identity.

[sometimesrunner]

Top 5% according to the calculator. If I were to guess beforehand I would have said UMC. We live in a LCOL area, so I definitely feel like we have plenty of money without focusing too much on our spending.