You're in the top 10% percentile, how is that middle class?
"Middle class" etc is an op to divide the proletariat — it's meaningless media and politician speak. Relationship to the means of production is always more relevant.
+1 to Cromalin's answer as to why people who make 100k/yr call themselves middle class though — "middle class" as a cultural term is cemented in the 70s-90s. 100k in 2021 is equivalent to 14k in 1970 and 47k in 1990.
Also add on that without connections or a completely funded degree via a previously well of family most "middle class" entry fees require some form of education above high school and therefor debt.
Being middle class isn't about income, it's a lifestyle. 90% of movies and TV shows set in America from the past 70 years are about 'the middle class.' So even though it no longer has any relationship to the middle, owning a house in the suburbs and going on vacation every once in a while makes you middle class. It just happens to be the case that only people making over 100k a year can afford that lifestyle now.
This makes sense lol. Forgot about inflation, just 10 years ago making 78k would be the same as making 100k today. 78k, while nothing to scoff at, was also nothing special even in 2010. Coupling that with ultra inflated housing education and healthcare, I can see why 100k makers see themselves as normal.
Edit : also It makes me realize how much better people's lives would be if housing, hcare and edu was socialized. It's just a simple socdem policy, but it would make people lives better by a million percent.
I think that's that's the secret trick the bourgs have in case of civil war/riots. They won't "Nordify" until there's a literal civil war, because such a policy is near guaranteed to placate the proletariat.
Yeah. My parents make a lot more money than they did 10-15 years ago, but their lifestyle hasn't changed at all (with some minor exceptions and also covid stuff)
Middle class has no Marxist category. It's just a social conception that means "not elite" and "not quite a plebian". In the days of heredity nobility, the bourgeoisie we're widely considered the "middle class" below the aristocracy and above the small proprietors and serfs. Over time, middle class came to mean "petit boug and higher paid workers" which it basically is today. It's an aspirational category, and America has always been about aspiration. Nowadays, it's harder and harder to live a "middle class lifestyle", so fewer and fewer workers are able to be apart of it. I'd say $75k a year for a single person or like $120-140k for a family is what it takes to live "middle class" now, so it's out of reach for most.
Great breakdown.
As a family member put it at Thanksgiving: a wage earner making 125k a year has more in common with someone making 50k a year versus 200k.
That's very well-put. If you're a software engineer making around 125k, the people making 50k are the non-technical people on your team and the person making 200k is your boss.
i think in most peoples eyes, upper class means top hats and mansions and ferraris and private jets and shit, and six figures doesnt get you that, it gets you an upgraded version of the middle-class lifestyle (if it even gets you that these days lol)
but the primary role of middle class in public discourse is to obscure real class relations, so its doing its job perfectly. white collar salary workers mostly get offended as shit if you call them working class, people look at you funny if you suggest that they have different class interests to small business owners, nobody is thinking about who owns/controls the means of production, and if everyone can just be middle class then everyone can be friends and theres no need for any sort of class conflict :)
Yep, I use middle class in the colloquial way. The American proletariat includes people making 20k as burger flippers in poorer states all the way to 400k as senior coders in Cali/NYC
As others have pointed out, the term "middle class" is mostly meaningless bullshit. However, if we define "middle class" as being a wage worker that can also afford things like a house, education, and a generally decent standard of living, then that definitely would require a six figure income in many parts of the US these days.
its possible to make six figures and be working class
also location matters. san fran at 100k and youll be living in a hut
as everyone says its a cultural category. it's unseemly in bourgeois republics to be aristocracy but people still want to be above the poors. thus the "middle" is everyone above incontrovertible poverty and theres nothing stopping the ungodly rich or even people in poverty from saying they're in the middle.
the one categorical difference is that the "middle" class doesn't have hereditary titles so in theory a very rich "middle class" family might become poor whereas a noble family is noble no matter their financial situation
I was middle class in Buffalo making $24k. I am def not poor making well over six figures in San Francisco but would say 8-10x salary similar lifestyle HOWEVER I save some money. But I can’t buy a house and owned one in Buffalo. The industries out here aren’t stable. I don’t believe in the future yet here I am planning for the future. It’s all relative it seems.
Do you want to believe that you are a normal guy? Not a posh fancylad and not a lazy loser? Congratulations, you now fit the definition of middle class as used by bourgeois politicians and journalists.
The middle class is BS anyway. There are two classes: The lower class which pays taxes, and the upper class who not only don't pay taxes but also gets government handouts. I don't care how much you make, if you're paying taxes and not being handed money hand over fist for existing, you're lower class in the eyes of the system. The "middle class" is a lie to make the poors think they're well off because there's others more poor than they are.
I think part of it is that people tend to hang around with people close in wealth to themselves. So basically everyone ends up being in the middle of the wealth distribution of there social cirle.
Also being middle class is highly propagandized as being a good and noble thing so everyone wants to paint themselves that way.
a lot of 'lifestyle creep' is just having the gall to want to live close to your workplace and not have to drive 45min-1hr+ each day
im just trying to work remote as much as possible even if it means i get paid like shit. commuting is a demon that must be purged
