It's so hard to think about class in the United States

[firecat]

snippy posted about an interactive feature on CNN.com that attempts to determine whether you, a person residing in the US, can correctly identify whether you count as "middle-class."

Here is the gist of the comment I left over at snippy's post:

Income is not a great gauge of class by itself. Net worth matters a LOT.

Have you read The Millionaire Next Door? One of the main themes is that some professionals with high incomes believe that appearing wealthy is an important part of their professional reputation. So they have big houses, expensive cars and clothes, and are deep in debt. Some rich people think it's important to save money, so they have lots of assets but they don't live in fancy houses, drive beat-up cars, etc. (The book is rather simplistic in its judgements but I agree that those patterns exist.)

Those rich folks and professionals might have similar gross incomes. But are they the same class?

They are defining "middle class" where I live as a household income of $68,420—$107,815.

They're counting it as the middle fifth of income, which means they're assuming five classes. One wonders what the results would be like if they took the middle third of income (I suspect the results would be more boring, although I'm sure some people would define themselves as middle class when they aren't in the middle third of income).

Comments

[snippy]

I found it confused (i.e., poor) writing that the author of the quiz/article conflated class with income bracket, yeah. But I still wish I'd had it for all those conversations all over the net I've had in the last 20 years with people who have both assets (frequently unacknowledged e.g., inheritances and gifts from wealthy family members) and income over $100,000 per year yet still think of themselves as middle class (and as having solved the problems people who are actually in the middle income bracket have--without acknowledging that they solved them with MORE MONEY).

PS They defined the top of the middle income bracket in my area as around $64,000 annually (I don't remember the exact number). That's the other way it's valuable, all those people arguing non-comparables because different local costs of living.

[firecat]

Fuck yeah, and I confess to having been that sort of person for a rather long time, although I think I am closer to having a clue now.