Whether they wear boxers or briefs is none of my concern. Nor do I care whether they choose to use a PC or a Mac. When it comes to Presidential candidates the one question I want answered is, “What income range is considered “middle class.”
This undefined group of citizens seems to be a favorite of politicians on both ends of the political spectrum. Reagan and Bush cut their taxes. Clinton too. Even Howard Dean appears ready to do the same if he is elected. But who are these people? Ask the janitor sweeping your company’s floors and he’ll likely tell you he’s “middle class.” Query the vice-president of marketing and he will give you the same answer. The single girls down in accounts payable and the married attorneys in the legal department will give the same response. In the land of equal opportunity, it appears, we’re all “middle class.”
But for the term is to be of any use it has to be definable. When the Presidential candidates offer to give money back to the “working poor” while promising to “soak the rich” how do we know they aren’t talking about us?
According to the census figures, the median income for a four-person family is $63,278. If your family brings in $64,000 a year then let me be the first to congratulate you – you, my friend, are indisputably the middle of the middle class. But how far above and below do we stretch the boundaries? One method, though I don’t presume it is necessarily the preferred choice, is to take the median from each end of the median. This works well on the lower end. The median of $63, 278 is approximately $31,640. If you make less than that figure then you obviously fall on the lower rungs of the income structure.
The other end, however, is a bit trickier. While the amount of income that could be earned is limited on one end (since you could earn nothing at all), the other side of the income equation is literally unlimited. Though there is no way to completely balance the structure, one method is to add the other lower median to our original one. This give us an upper limit of $94,917. If you make above $95,000 a year then you are “rich.”
To be considered “middle class”, then, requires us to fall in the income range of $32,000 to $95,000. This might appear reasonable on the surface. If you are making $30,000 a year then tripling your income would certainly be major improvement. But would earning over the 95K mark really constitute the “upper class?” I’m not so sure. Take me, for example. I’m in the military and my wife is in sales. On a good year we could if my wife worked hard and I don’t get demoted we could easily meet that figure. Yet no one (except perhaps my redneck kin) would consider us to be “rich.”
The point is that the term “middle class” and “rich” are essentially worthless in our fluid economy. In East Texas, where I was raised, earning $95,000 a year would put you in the upper stratus of society. With the same income in San Francisco, however, you would be lucky to meet the mortgage requirements to buy a home. Obviously, an area’s cost of living is a bigger determination of class status then income levels.
Since we live in a country where the value of an income is a relative matter, why do politicians speak about it in such absolute terms?
Update: Jefferey Collins of joyfulchristian add some important points:
Of course one of the things that people who fall victim to the class warfare jargon fail to consider is that wealth doesn't have anything to do with what you make; wealth is about what you keep. In other words, it's not your income that defines your wealth, it's your net worth. We don't have a tax that directly soaks up the wealth of someone who's living. (Although we may tax certain items of property they own.) For some reason people fail to see that wealth is accumulated over time, it doesn't just drop in your lap. And because wealth is all about accumulating resources, the income tax hurts those trying to get rich far more than it hurts those who are already there.
Update: Jeffery Collins, a CPA, also dispels the myth that, "the rich don't pay taxes."Update 2: Spitbull backs up my conclusions with some solid research. (Well, sorta...)
1
You're right. Income is only one facet of defining a persons socioeconomic class, but the politicians seem to like to think of it solely in terms of that.
One argument though, that is highly entertaining to try on your left-leaning friends and relatives is this:
The next time they start to rant about Bush giving tax cuts only to the rich ask them if they received a rebate check last year on their taxes. Then ask them if they consider themselves to be rich.
If they don't believe the tax cuts are right, you might want to ask them if they returned their check to the government so it could be used elsewhere.
2
I would disagree, in that any family of four making less than 31K/year has earned the right to call anyone making over 95K/year "them rich folks".
It honestly feels silly to occasionaly feel like i'm "struggling", given the decidedly upper-middle-class dough i'm raking in...
posted on 01.07.2004 2:52 PM3
Hey Marty,
If they are living in the same area, then sure, someone making three times more money is "better off." But I make more money than my little brother and he lives in a better house, drives a better car, and has a higher standard of living. Why? Because the value of a dollar goes further in his area of the state.
posted on 01.07.2004 2:59 PM4
There's some truth to the idea that most people consider themselves to be "middle-class." And it is tricky to define. To counter your East Texas versus San Francisco problem, you would of course have to normalize the figures for local conditions. That is, you can't really define a "middle class" in terms of absolute dollars. You have to use the local figures to make that determination.
What you can do, however, is to define the middle class in terms of percentage deviation from a baseline. Say you create an index that takes into account cost of housing, cost of food, and cost of fuel and energy, and a certain amount of fudge. For any given area, you'd plug in the numbers and get $X as your index figure. Now, anyone who is within a certain range of that figure, percentage-wise, is "middle class."
Of course, there's no way to adjust the tax code to account for this equitably, without greatly increasing the complexity of the already over-complex tax code. To do so, you would have to adjust federal tax rates locally, and that would be a huge mess.
One little nit: you complain that "middle class" is too fuzzy a term, and in the same breath you complain that politicians are talking in "absolute terms." Which is it? They're being too specific, or not specific enough.
posted on 01.07.2004 3:08 PM5
Girsch,
I like your idea. I think the baseline approach would give us a more effective way of determining what is middle class and what is "rich."
When I claim that politicians are using the term in an absolute way, I mean only that they are acting as if it has a set meaning when, in reality, it doesn't.
posted on 01.07.2004 3:12 PM6
Joe:
Now I get it. And you can call me "Tom," by the way. :)
posted on 01.07.2004 3:58 PM7
Gee thanks Joe. Now the next time my wife pushes for an extravagant purchase for the house and I shoot it down by explaining that we can't afford it, she'll simply say, "But we're rich aren't we?"
posted on 01.07.2004 4:00 PM8
The only reason for defining a "middle class" is to make a class warfare tool for politicians. I've always been of the idea that we should pull together no matter what socioeconomic (sp?) class. I make very little money I wouldn't even be close to getting out of the poor house by those standards, but I feel that I should give what I can. I don't care what the guy down the street and I want him to keep his money as much as I would like to keep mine. That is why the tax system the way it stands is not right. If the guy down the street wants to help me, great. But I don't think the gov. should make him though taxes.
But thats what happens because of class warfare.
posted on 01.08.2004 12:42 AM9
My experience has been that "You're Rich" is the first half of the Feeding Cry of the Leech:
"YOU'RE RICH! YOU GOTTA GIMME!"
"Remember, stealing is wrong. But Cable Companies are Rich Corporations, so that makes it OK." -- "So You've Decided to Steal Cable" pamphlet from The Simpsons episode "Homer vs Lisa and the Eighth Commandment"
posted on 01.08.2004 11:29 AM10
I'll say it again; how much money you make is only a part of how you define someone's socioeconomic class. If all you're looking for is their income level relative to their area, then you're not really defining their class, just their income. For example, the infamous Paris Hilton would be considered upper class if defined solely in terms of her finances, but if you looked below the surface you'd most likely discover that she's about a half-step below trailer trash in terms of her class.
In popular use, the class term is a gross generalization that is malleable enough for politicians of all stripes to use and I guess that's the whole point of the post in the first place.