What Will be Left When There is NO Middle Class?

Of course. Thanks for not messing up the stereotypical image you create.

 

$70K a year for an individual is probably Upper Class according to individual income statistics the way I read them. Only about 12% of individuals in the country make that amount or more. I think it is hard to be Middle Class income when you are a single person making more than 88% of the people out there.

(Personal Income numbers were taken from Wikipedia, just like the Household Income numbers.)

 

First, I don't make $70K. I make less than $70K. Second, you can't compare my income to the same income level in Oklahoma or South Dakota. New Jersey has the third highest cost of living in the country behind Hawaii and California. I live in a 1400 sqft condo and it cost me $300K. Of course now it is only worth $240K and I have lost all of my equity in my property. Does that sound upper class to you or middle class?

In addition, I don't believe that only 12% of the population makes more money than I do. Based on Census Bureau statistics, the median household income in New Jersey is $70,347 while that of the entire USA is $52,029.

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/34000.html

I think that puts me squarely in the middle class.

 

I read your statement wrong. If it is 30k less than 70k, then yes, you probably are middle class in income. If it is $1.99 less than probably not.

Household income vs. personal income (single earner 25+ years old). Since you said you were single with no kids, I went with personal income statistics over household income statistics as being more reflective of your true disposable income. The median personal income in the US is 32,140.

If me and my wife combine to make 70k while supporting a family and my oldest son (who is single with no family to support) makes 70k, he would be in a different class than us. His disposable income would be much greater. Several times what ours would be at the same income.

 

Oh, I see. your ''there wil be no middle class'' is your a sketch of what you'd like to discuss. So since you stated that some who are above and some who are below middle class will now and then slip into the middle class; how can middle class disappear?

 

Have you ever been to a third world country? They may have some sort of a middle class but it is nothing you'd recognize as a middle class if you grew up in this country. When a country is dominated by a very large poor class and only has a few percent of the population of wealthy people at the top, you effectively have no viable middle class. Why this confuses you is beyond me. Its a simple concept.

 

Go ahead and keep burying your head in the sand and tell me I'm just making this stuff up...

Americans Tread Water in Gulf Between Rich, Poor

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — A Wall Street adviser leaves early for work to avoid panhandlers at his suburban train station. In coal country, a suddenly homeless man watches from a bench as wealthy women shop for dresses. A down-and-out waitress sits glumly on her stoop across the street from a gleaming suburb. A freshly elected politician loses his day job.
They're the faces of a census report released this week showing that the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is wider than ever.
The recession technically ended in the middle of last year, but the numbers can't tell the whole story. The census report translates to stories of impatience, resignation and hopelessness for those who are living it across the country.
It's the story of Roy Houseman, who, having barely finished celebrating his election to the City Council in Missoula, Mont., was laid off. It's the story of Ashleigh Dorner, an unemployed Detroiter who has a car but no money for gas or insurance. It's the story of John Morgan, a financial adviser who avoids interaction with the poor in the gritty New York suburb of Mount Vernon.
And it's the story of Charles Fox.
Fox, 68, has claimed a bench on High Street in Morgantown, W.Va. It's tucked between a pizza shop and a gelato stand he can't afford to visit. Beside him are two black trash bags stuffed with his belongings.
He had a home until last month, when a fire burned down one of the last cheap motels in town. Now he sits in the morning sunshine, worrying about the approach of winter.
"I ain't found no place to live yet," he says, staring down at the sidewalk.
Morgantown's metro area has the largest gap between rich and poor in the 50 states, the new census figures say. That's partly because it's a college town, and the number of students is growing rapidly, along with the low-paying jobs that support them.
College towns also have highly paid professors, researchers and doctors. And they're a landlord's market: Fox, who was spending $450 a month on rent – three-quarters of his monthly disability check – says he can't find a room for under $1,000 a month.
He used to work in a coal mine, but a blocked artery in his leg makes walking and standing – and holding a job – difficult. At night, he finds a bunk at a packed homeless shelter.
"I sit up here on the street in the daytime and just wonder, 'Where am I going to go?'" he says. Tears fall as he adds, "Sometimes I go two or three days without anything to eat."
Across the street is Coni & Franc's, where blouses go for $100 and gowns for thousands. But owner Constance Chico Merandi says she deals with the homeless and working poor, too.
There's a sale table with $10 shoes, and sometimes Merandi, 51, pulls an already discounted dress from her sale rack and lets it go for less to a woman dreaming of a wedding gown she knows she can't afford.
"It's just part of living and coexisting here," she says. "We realize we have to do something."
Meanwhile, Fox sits on his bench and waits for his luck to change.
"You ain't got a chance anymore in this town," he says. "You really don't."
John Morgan, a financial adviser on Wall Street, goes to work earlier some mornings to avoid panhandlers at the railroad station in Mount Vernon, a struggling city of 68,000 bordering the Bronx.
He has no interaction with other residents, including the poor – and doesn't want any.
Warily eyeing a man begging commuters for "train fare," Morgan says, "This guy hits me all the time. At first I gave him a dollar or two and now he sees me coming."
Morgan, 64, is a widower who lives alone in a condominium apartment. He and his wife raised a family in a house in neighboring Pelham before moving two years ago to one of Mount Vernon's more pleasant neighborhoods.
"I don't have anything to do with Mount Vernon," Morgan says. "I shop in Pelham. I go straight out to my house on Long Island on the weekends. I've never spent a weekend in Mount Vernon."
As Morgan spoke, police patrolled the downtown train station, where a missing-woman flier hung.
He has his doubts about the statistics revealing a wider gap between rich and poor. The data showed that the top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income. The bottom 20 percent took in just 3.4 percent of income.
"Things aren't good out there," he says. "I think the rich are getting poorer and the poor are staying poor."
Ashleigh Dorner was getting by, she says, until job losses in and around Detroit stunted business at the restaurants where she hustled for tips to augment her lower-than-minimum-wage pay. Around the same time, her boyfriend began bringing home less money as home improvement work dried up.
Now she's unemployed and they have to live on the $1,000 per month he earns and "a lot of help from family," Dorner says, sitting with her 2-year-old daughter on the stoop of their rented home.
They have no telephone. They have a car, but they can't afford to put it on the road.
"We don't have money for car insurance or even gas," says Dorner, 25. "My boyfriend rides his bike back and forth to work."
Their home on Detroit's far east side is across the street from one of the affluent communities known as the Grosse Pointes.
Jon Gandelot, 67, lives and practices estate planning law in Grosse Pointe Farms, where fancy homes sit serenely on professionally manicured lawns, just blocks from some of Detroit's worst neighborhoods.

 

My household income is my personal income. Last time I checked, my mortgage is not less because I am single. My car payment is not less because I am single. My insurance is not less because I am single. The only expenses that increase with additional people in the household are food and utilities and the savings I realize don't amount to that much.

Regarding disposable income, that is a result of choice. I chose not to have a wife or children, therefore I do have more disposable income than most others in the middle class. However, the end result is that if both households make $70K, they are both middle class no matter how they choose to spend their income. I wasn't aware that the measure of middle class was related to disposable income.

 

Well, that isn't entirely correct. Your car insurance does increase with more drivers in the house. You could also add things like life insurance, cell phone plans (which techically are utilities), and you certainly can't discount the wear and tear additional people inflict on your home especially if those additional people are my three boys. Their motto is: "Dad'll fix it" and "where is the ATM, I mean dad?"

 

So what you are saying is the the small yearly difference in those costs is enough to vault me into the upper class even though I have the same income of someone who is middle class. That is ridiculous!

Here is my definition of upper class. If you have the ability to own more than one residence, you are upper class. I don't come anywhere near that category. The fact that Stujoe considers $70K yearly gross income upper class is staggering to me.

 

Yes I have been to third world countries. But I havent lived in one. Have you? The economy has tanked here in the US. It has before ya know. Thats no reason to think it will never recuperate. You have us living on the streets of early 20th century Calcutta with bejewelled potentates tossing us some meager alms.

 

Cell phones? A luxury to be sure. And how about jobs for those new drivers in one's family to pay for the increase of one's auto policy? My father made a helluva living without a cell phone.

Oh and that story you posted concerning the cencus. Pure fiction. A poor waitress sits on her stoop, while across the street the rich play. Ive really never seen that kind of thing. Have you? A poor section directly across the street from a well to do section? Wouldnt it be a gradual change? And the homeless guy. Why couldnt he have been a little smarter? ''I AINT got NO place to go.''. How strereotypical. and the Wall streeter. The best. Why live in MT. Vernon when Pelham is more suited for his lifestyle? Why take Amtrak to Manhattan, when if in the Bronx you can take the #6 subway all the way downtown for half the price? None of it rings true at all.

 

Actually, I'm not saying that. I don't have a dog in that argument one way or the other. There are lots of definitions of middle class, upper middle class, and every other class even by the experts. My definition is that if you are poor, you most certainly know it. If you are wealthy, you certainly know it as well. The middle classes are the rest of us.

I don't quite understand the fixation some folks here have with each others income level. What difference does it make? The majority of Republicans aren't wealthy and neither are the majority of Democrats. It can be said that Republicans that are not wealthy are helping those that are Republicans and wealthy stay that way while Democrats that are not wealthy are far less interested in helping wealthy Democrats or Republicans stay that way. The perception this creates between these two non-wealthy groups is that non-wealthy Republicans are stupid to undermine their own situation and the non-wealthy Democrat's situation at the same time and non-wealthy Democrats are viewed as all looking for handouts. Neither view is actually correct but it helps to maintain the status quo for those that are the wealth and want to stay that way regardless of how they came to be wealthy or which party they belong to. Change is constant. Managed change is advantageous to those that manage the change. Luck favors the prepared as they say.

 

I think the upper class is better determined by wealth rather than income. If you still have to go to work everyday you're probably not upper class.

 

Okay, let me understand this. The majority of both Republicans and Democrats are not wealthy yet there is no middle class. That means that the majority of Americans would be considered poor. According to the census information that I posted earlier in this thread, the median household income in the US is over $50K per year. How is that possible if everyone is poor?

This fact is that the middle class is not disappearing and this entire thread is just another example of using carefully selected statistics in order to bolster a particular point of view. I know many people who have low paying jobs and live paycheck to paycheck. However, almost all have a cellphone, most have cars, and most have a really nice TV in their residence. None of them are starving and I don't consider any of them in poverty. By your definition, they would all be considered middle class.

 

But that is my point exactly. Nobody who makes $70K per year is in a position to accumulate significant wealth no matter what their discretionary income is.

 

I dont think thats true. Have you ever read 'The Bonfire of the Vanities'? The main character Sherman McCoy was very upper class. Granted his father was wealthy. A goal for which Sherman strived.

 

Not necessarily, we had a recent example here where a guy who was a janitor & never made more than $16k in a year died a millionaire. Granted he lived in a one-room apartment all his life & never had kids but you do hear stories like this every once in a while. It's not so much a function of how much you earn but rather what you do with the money you earn. I know guys who make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year but are so far in debt they don't have a pot to p*ss in while I also know many people who earn much, much less but manage to save & live comfortably.

 

Wow. Someone else also says the middle class is not disappearing. Or are they missing the point of the thread as well?

 

You guys just seem determined to put words in my mouth. I, at no point anywhere in this thread or anywhere else on the entire internet said that this country didn't have a middle class. Yet, that is all you can hear.

What I have actually said, is that the middle class is shrinking and in the future we may end up just like a third world banana republic that only has very wealth and very poor. All of the statistics out there back up this trend that has continued unabated for years. The reality is that the wealthy are getting wealthier, the poor are getting poorer, and the percent of the population that is considered middle class by any definition you want is definitely shrinking. Even the current census says exactly that.

Go ahead and offer your own statistics that prove this is wrong. Love to see them!