It’s often more useful to lump incomes by quintile rather than trying to fit people into “classes”. Class is actually a British holdover that doesn’t translate as well to America. An artist who makes ~50k a year there or a college professor who makes ~80k could be “upper class”, while many people in sales who make much more money than that would be middle class thanks to their more gaudy and bougey tastes. Britney Spears and Tony Soprano aren’t upper class, they’re a trailer park girl and working class stiff with money, respectively.
By Quintile, household income for San Diego (2008):
0-20%: ~25k/year
21-40%: ~25-50k/year
41-60%: ~50-80k/year
61-80%: ~80-125k/year
Top 20%: >$125k/year
For bearishgurl, at least 60% of San Diego households are below middle class. AN’s breakdown puts the median in lower middle class territory. Perhaps the middle class really is shrinking that much, but for me the middle really should be “the middle”.
I have a hard time with any lumping that doesn’t put the 50% point in “middle class”. Because there is such a huge gap between the ultra-rich and the rich, the rich don’t tend to think of themselves as such. At the same time the truly poor tend to be invisible to most of us.
There is of course a difference between income and wealth. I know a medical doctor in his early 30s who probably makes over $200k a year, but whose family net worth is currently negative thanks to student loans, their lifestyle, and being underwater on his mortgage. I also know a guy who inherited a bunch of houses from his parents whose net worth is probably pushing $2m, but probably nets less than $100k/year. Neither probably thinks of himself as “rich”, yet compared to most people, both are.
