Ive noticed recently that my generation has… no concept of what the various economic classes actually are anymore. I talk to my friends and they genuinely say things like “at least i can afford a middle class lifestyle with this job because i dont need a roommate for my one bedroom apartment” and its like… oughh
You guys, middle class doesnt mean “a stable enough rented roof over your head,” it means “a house you bought, a nice car or two, the ability to support a family, and take days off and vacations every year with income to spare for retirement savings and rainy days.” If all you have is a rented apartment without a roommate and a used car, you’re lower class. That’s lower class.
And i cant help but wonder if this is why you get kids on tumblr lumping in doctors and actors into their “eat the rich” rhetoric: economic amnesia has blinded you to what the class divides actually are. The real middle class lifestyle has become so unattainable within a system that relies upon its existence that theyve convinced you that those who can still reach it are the elites while your extreme couponing to afford your groceries is the new normal.
A century ago in the US, there were very sharp boundaries between the types of jobs that were middle class, and the types of jobs that were working class, and how much the jobs paid largely followed that, so you could know from the type of job a person had whether they were financially middle class or not. This plus classist educational and hiring systems allowed for a large degree of cultural homogeneity within a particular class. It was really easy, for the most part, to see the divisions between classes in the US. And that’s largely when the cultural idea of “what middle class is” got set.
Then the labor movement resulted in a whole bunch of blue-collar jobs (i.e. jobs that involved working with your hands, trades, manufacturing, etc) getting actually paid what they’re worth, which meant comfortably middle-class incomes, which blurred the lines a bit starting in the 40s and 50s.
Then, in the 70s, white collar jobs (think office work–the sort of job where you’re never going to work up a sweat doing it) stopped keeping up with inflation. Up to this point, pretty much all white collar jobs were middle class jobs (at least the ones that weren’t also pink-collar jobs, like secretary or teacher). So the purchasing power of the salaries for those jobs fell gradually over the decades.
But we still judge “am I middle class?” based on outdated appearances and whether or not you work a white collar job. A lot of people assume that they are middle class because they work a white collar job and live in the suburbs.
But if a single missed paycheck or major accident could spell financial ruin, you are not middle class.
To be middle class, you have to be financially stable enough that you don’t have to care about things like how much groceries and gas cost. You have to be financially stable enough that you can take vacations every year without worrying about it. Not lavish vacations, necessarily, but nice ones. You have to be financially stable enough that saving for retirement is not a hardship, and neither is having a few thousand dollars in a rainy-day fund. And it’s not enough to be able to afford all of that for yourself alone! You would have to be able to afford children on top of all that, either on your own income or combined income with your partner.
If you could not afford:
- kids
- vacations
- retirement savings
- emergency/rainy day savings
- not worrying about money issues, regular bills, the price of gas or groceries
then you are not middle class. In New York (state, not city), you have to make at least $75k/year to be middle class. In Georgia, you have to make at least $55k/year to be middle class.
And the thing is, not understanding what “middle class” actually means is really convenient for right-wing politicians. Because so many people think they are middle class when they are not. “They say this policy will help the middle class, and hurt the working class. Well, I am middle class, so I am in favor of it.” Except the person who thinks this isn’t middle class, and what’s more, their boss may not qualify as middle class either.
Also: The US works hard to blur the line between social classes and economic classes.
A hundred years ago, they were almost entirely overlapping. Now ,they’re very much not. There are people with “working class” jobs and communities and upper-middle-class incomes, because electricians and plumbers continue to be in demand at whatever rates the wealthy can afford to pay, while office workers with a master’s degree and a mortgage may be looking for gig work on the weekends to cover their living expenses.
(A mortgage often doesn’t cost more than rent… it just requires a larger up-front payment, plus “financial security” to get the loan. Middle & upper class people have the connections and background to get that, where many working class people don’t, regardless of income.)
Middle class income is supposed to be:
- Your day-to-day living expenses are covered. You are not worried about when your next paycheck arrives; as long as it’s on time, you don’t have to fret over expenses that come at the beginning or middle of the month
- This includes rent/mortgage, health care, transportation, food, and KIDS
- You have money for leisure - both to buy things (game console, hobby equipment like skis or a surfboard) and time & money to go on vacation to use those things
- You can throw a reasonable amount into savings for the future and not worry about that money not being available now
- You can absorb an unexpected expense of a few hundred dollars without blinking, and a few thousand with only minor adjustments to your annual spending.
You can replace tires on the car, fix a broken window in the house, get rid of the Corelle plates you recently discovered contain lead, get a new tv set because the old one’s screen died, replace the couch that broke when the kids decided to play “the floor is lava” once too often.- None of those expenses cause you stress. You don’t like them; they may not be comfortable; but you’re not worried about how you’re going to afford them.
These are not the center of a middle class income. These are the lower-end, bare-minimum qualifications. Comfortable middle-class income includes home ownership, 1 car per adult in the household, and ability to afford an overseas vacation once a year. Maybe twice a year, if you have friends/relatives to stay with instead of hotels.
Of course, nobody wants to think of themselves as “lower class,” so the media latched on to the term “working class” for “the people who don’t have enough money to qualify for middle class.” This is something of a misnomer; “the working class” includes a hell of a lot of students and only partially employed people.
It also implies a category below working/lower class, which is called “poverty.” And nobody agrees on where the lines for that are. (There are some government numbers. It’s been pointed out that they are far, far below where actually poverty is - that there is nowhere in the US where you can pay rent on a 1 bedroom apartment on minimum wage, and any sensible person would call “Cannot afford a 1-bedroom apartment despite having a full-time job” a form of poverty.)
Capitalism has worked very hard to convince students who have four roommates sharing a 2-bedroom apartment that they’re part of the middle class.
I always assumed the classes were defined mathematically in relation to the population as a whole, and would therefore shift with what percentage of people made what income
….but, I am not exactly sure whether I thought middle class was supposed to be the median income, or the mode, or the mean, or what