Who says that?
It’s really hard to even decide what middle class is. I have a good job, good benefits, savings and retirement account, but if I lost my job we’d be homeless in 6 months.
The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. Millionaires are closer to zero than they are the ultra rich.
“I am closer to becoming a millionaire than Elon Musk is.”
Millionaires don’t count as ‘rich’ any more. One million is no longer enough for stability.
most people middle aged people with six figure professional careers are millionaires. that’s why the number of millionaires keeps going up.
i’m not far off from being a millionaire myself. i probably would already be one had i started my current career at 22 and not 30.
however, most of my peers are of the NIMBY type who think growth and investment is bad because their homes will stop returning 5% gains year over year and they own stocks, so they also benefit massively from an inflated stock market.
most of my friends have turned from social progressives to social conservatives once they bought a house and had a kid. funny how that works. now they will bitch at you for there being too much business and too much change/development/growth. 5-10 years ago they were bitching about boring things were and there wasn’t enough development/change/growth.
Some of my peers should be rich enough to retire, but fell victim to lifestyle inflation. Sure they’re making $250k/year, but they moved into a $5k/mo apartment, go on expensive vacations, and just do whatever in their day to day. I don’t know where their money goes. Maybe they are secretly investing.
Meanwhile I live like a goblin on less
they spend it.
a huge chunk of it IME is that they don’t cook so they eat out almost every meal. That runs up into 1000s pretty quick. eating out in my city can run you easily $100+ a day. they also impulse buy trendy and expensive things, like Pelotons.
everything is about the image. without the image of being successful they have nothing.
I did have a coworker that was both a picky eater and didn’t cook. She’d order seamless (GrubHub) for most meals. That’s got to be like… $30/meal, two meals a day so $60, seven days a week, ~$400/week? My monthly food budget is like $200. Plus she’d go out drinking. Guess that adds up. That’s like $100k over five years.
She also had an expensive gym membership she didn’t use and was too shy to cancel.
There’s never been a middle class. The illusion of the “lazy poor” is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.
Yes there was.
In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.
Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.
Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million…
You are correct! And it’s crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.
Weird how everything’s turning to shit now that corporations don’t pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.
“Too big to fail” was actually just “too big to stop.” So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.
The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people’s bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.
Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.
Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.
actually most middle class voters voted and supported for the policies that destroyed themselves.
they started deinvesting our healthcare and education systems in the 70s, often as a part of the backlash of civil rights and the economic stagnation of the 70s.
Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?
It was the people who didn’t have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it’s sustainability.
And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we’re always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don’t have a country.
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The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).
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In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.
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You’re right, but that’s not middle class–that’s working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of “middle” class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.
Now you’re just playing with definitions.
“Middle class” is the term most people use.
I mostly agree. They’re synonymous today, but I think there’s still an important distinction.
The term “middle class” is distinct from the “lower class.” But those two are more or less the same when compared to the “upper class” (what I would call the “wealth class”). Both lower and middle classes need to work in order to survive, while the wealth class has enough money to live without working (many of them still work, but it’s optional for them).
Any distinction between lower and middle class ends up harming both, and allowing the upper class to hoard more wealth. I generally try to promote the term “working class” because it doesn’t divide us, and more accurately portrays the differences between classes.
An illustration in this vein:
Was going to bring up interest rates, but apparently a 30 year mortgage in 1960 was something like 7%. Which…isn’t that bad.
Lyndon Johnson wanted to have a massive war in Vietnam without raising taxes, so he printed money to pay for it. Nixon doubled down on LBJ’s plan. The OPEC oil embargo really made inflation soar. Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to run the Fed and bring it under control. Carter’s plan worked, but only after Reagan won. Then Reagan turned around and started cutting taxes without a way to pay for the cuts.
In 1968 when Nixon came in, ‘middle class’ was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough left over for a few luxuries. By the time Bush Sr finished, ‘middle class’ was two incomes. In 1968 $1 million was a massive fortune; by 1993 it was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Mortgage rates were in the teens in the early 80s.
Yeah, that’s why I brought it up. I always assumed they were high in the 60s too.
It’s not fabricated, these people honestly think one can live the “welfare queen” lifestyle. Reagan said the words and it resonated with the Republicans, Fox News ran with it. But really, this isn’t some master plan. Unless you’ve been through it or tried getting welfare, you can’t know how hard it is and how little you get. I’ve talked to many people like this.
You have to earn below 130% of the poverty line to get food stamps. More you make, less you get. I will say that when I first moved here I was getting a ridiculous amount for a single guy, and they just kept sending it, no questions asked for 6-months. Those days are long gone.
God knows what you have to do to get an actual check, but you have to be worse off than merely needing food stamps. And those checks are paltry. Unless you’re renting a room in someone’s house, you’re not making rent.
Unemployment is a fucking joke. In Florida, employers have to pay $7,200 when you first start, and they have 6 months to get it all paid into the unemployment fund. I would have got a MAX of $4,200, then it’s over. That was less than a month’s pay from my last job.
These is a gauntlet to be run to get a single penny. And you have to keep running that gauntlet, over and over again. I could go on and on, but I figured out 3 decades back that it’s easier, less time consuming, and more profitable, to work a shit job 40-hours a week.
This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.
I’m Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.
For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.
But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself–those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.
The rich 1% are the middle class. America discarded the hereditary upper class when we banned titles of nobility.
In our free society there are only two classes : those with enough money that they never have to work again, and those without.
no. they aren’t.
i have family in the 1%. they think they are middle class, but nothing about them is middle class. their perception is deeply distorted.
the only reason they need to continue to work is that they massively over consume. they have 6 cars, boats, four properties, etc. if they cut that down to one modest house, modest travel, and dumped all the cars and boats etc, they could have retired 10 years ago in their 40s. there are 100s of articles about these types of people in major newspaper in magazines. how ‘difficult’ the life of multi millionaires int he upper west side is because this year they had to cut back on their 50K ski vacation to a 30K ski vacation. the ‘struggle’ it is to own 10 million in property and how they are terrified they might need to sell the vacation home they use 2 weeks year because it’s not going up in value as fast as they want and the taxes went up.
but if you talk to them they think they are working class ordinary folks and all of this is entirely normal. and if you dare suggest it isn’t they will tell you are a jealous asshole who is just lazy and hasn’t worked hard like they did. they are also super mad right now that they have to pay full tuition to send their kids to college, they feel like they are being ‘punished’ my the schools because their children should go to free for being smarter and richer than other kids and the stupid poor kids should be the ones paying full tuition. they are being ‘punished’ for their success, and poor lazy people are being ‘rewarded’. they absolutely are stoked at what Trump is doing with colleges and removing DEI and international students, because it means their kids have a better chance of getting into an elite school.
and all of their 1% friends are like this. most of their friends are actually WAY weather than they are. but if you go to a party with them all they will do nothing but go on and on about how poor and unfortunate they are because they can’t afford condos in Hawaii or 100 ft yachts or how worried they are their kids might have to go to a public state school and not a ivy league school and what a horrible social embarrassment that would be for them because their friends/family will think they raised stupid shitty kids.
Wealth does messed up things to our brains.
Nobody wants to believe they’re the “bad guys”, or “privileged”, or anything like that. So when you have more wealth than 99% of other people out there, you (consciously or subconsciously) come up with ways to justify it.
In this case, the multimillionaires believe they are the “normal”, middle-of-the-road class, because they compare themselves against the ultra-rich. And anyone who has less than them must be lazy, or bad with money, or some other moral failing. Because if the millionaires aren’t morally superior, the only other explanation is privilege or greed, and they can’t live with that.
There are a handful of wealthy people who haven’t succumbed to that as much. Dolly Parton is a great example–one article I read suggested she’d be one of the wealthiest people in the world if she weren’t donating 90 to 95% of her income for most of her career. But when you have empathy and a lot of wealth, you end up with just a little wealth and a lot of grateful people.
There is no middle-class. There is the working class and the aristocrats.
That reminds me of a joke.
The working class walks into a bar . . .
I’m about to walk into my fav microbrewery… Cheers! 🍻
what’s the cut off?
As I’ve always said, the greatest trick the idle wealthy class ever pulled was convincing the middle class that the working class is the enemy.
The middle class is part of the working class.
working class is dirty. middle class is clean.
my parents hated my working class friends and their parents because they saw them as dirty gross people. they adored my richer friends who had pools and nice cars.
my parents thought of themselves as middle class because we had a clean house and clean cars and didn’t do ‘dirty’ things that working class people do, like drink. they also didn’t have manual labor jobs.
it’s more than about money. it’s about lifestyle and branding.
i have a middle class job, but a lot of people think i’m a poor working class loser because i don’t have the lifestyle markers and consumption habits of middle class. like i only own a base model car, in don’t travel internationally 2x a year, i don’t live in a ‘new’ house/condo, i don’t go out to restaurants with $1000 bills, etc
plenty of rich people debt spend.
Yes, but they can afford to debt spend for better things they end up spending less for in the long run.
Did you actually read the quote, or are you just going off the biggest text?
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” - James Baldwin
No truer words.
I say all the time how expensive it is to be poor now!! You kinda need a phone; you might find a cheap car but the insurance will be $$; i can barely leave my house without getting on a toll road; you might find a cheap apartment but the rent will include $200 in fees. Every interaction is designed to be profitable for someone and we’re losing.
The rich are the lazy ones
the rich are a lot more paranoid about money than the middle/working class.
Maybe there is one of the lucky 10,000 here who has not heard of boots theory.
There is comfortable, wealthy, and the super rich. The first ones still look at money as the rest of the population, while the ultra wealthy (the top .1% or higher) use their assets for power. They don’t have to concern themselves almost all of the time on price tags for things, it’s irrelevant. It’s what their influence can allow them to do that is far more important. So yes, the richest live an expensive lifestyle, but they don’t care.
I agree with others on the middle class falsehood. You either have enough assets and income to be able to live well, or you don’t. At this point many millionaires are not that well off either because their expenses put them in the same situation the poorer people have to deal with. Maybe it’s not only one paycheck away from disaster, but they have their own buffer zone that’s not as large as they’d like in bad times. Likewise, there are “poor” people who manage their budgets well enough that they are comfortable, but because they don’t have a lot they are at the mercy of things around them so that can disappear quickly.
The rich line is where you can lose entire businesses or a house or other large material thing and the money part doesn’t phase you.
the people i know that bitch the most about being poor are the ones who are saving like 30% of their income for retirement. who have seven figures in the bank already.
they are just straight up morons whose perception of their financial reality is deeply distorted and often isolated from everyone else by their perception that ‘comfort’ requires 8 figures of wealth, when really most people with six figures of wealth are quite comfortable.
I have never heard that saying before.
It feels very “white working class suburban conservative” in it’s sentiment. I grew up around a lot of people I can imaging saying that who were a bad month away from being truly poor.
Rimjobsteve moment
