Off topic, but I was reading CNN headlines, and saw that a car the Kardashians were in slid off the road. I assumed they’d been injured or something. But no, no damage, no injuries. Bottom line, the Kardashians were in a car that slipped a few feet and no one was hurt.
Why in God’s green earth is this on CNN’s front page??
Of course it is all relative. Suppose you make $100K in the Bay Area, most people will say they are middle class, whereas people in Iowa will think they are rich. You ARE comparing yourselves to people living around you and your purchasing power.
I am not saying you are comparing yourselves with a certain person, I thought you would be able to see that.
“Why in God’s green earth is this on CNN’s front page??”
Because Bruce Jenner was just involved and may face charges in a high-profile car crash that killed a woman. So, it’s sort of a sidebar story. Meawhile, the daughters had a wreck in Montana. Blah, blah, blah… That’s why.
I don’t understand the fascination with that family. They seem useless, untalented, and have the same entertainment value as a Jerry Springer show. I am rather amazed at the size of Kim’s butt, yet beyond that, what is there?
A “good” company in the Bay area likely pays their engineers more than that amount. But I am not sure how many percentage of companies in the Bay Area are considered as “good” companies - with all the “Tata” effects which become more popular in recent years. But the employees in the company with the yellow G sign will likely still be doing fine in quite a many coming years (due to its enormous advertisement-related income stream) I guess.
More likely not, a family in the Bay Area are doing relatively relatively well (but not filthy rich) financially is likely because of two wage earners , the income of both being at the level of a typical engineer’s income. (esp. the dual-income and no kid family. It seems to me more and more new young couple do not want any kid – some young people even do not want marriage these days.)
BTW, Don’t get me get started on this: I once met a two-income couple who had one Lexus and one Mercedes and owned an expensive house and their parents are still in Medicaid or something (and the relationship between them and their parents is excellent.) Disgusting…
I think it’s funny that someone from California is calling Michiganders status conscience.
I’m sure she would have found the same if she was going to USC or UCLA. Or Old Miss or Washington and Lee. Just to name a few.
I find her views to be reverse snobbishness. Look at me, I’m from Palo Alto. We don’t care about labels. While apparently wearing her North Face jacket and her uggs that she wore when she went to Tahoe.
Okay, I’ll admit that I have dropped names when talking to my students from India, China, California, Florida … names like LLBean, Eddie Bauer, Sorrel … in an effort to assist them in finding appropriate clothing for the cold winter they cannot yet fathom. I suppose I am one of those snotty Michigan folks the author dislikes. 
As for the middle-class thing, my best friend has a 10,000 square foot “retirement home” in an area of the country where the cost of living is reasonable, more money saved up than H and I have ever made, annual bonuses that dwarf those my H - a regular salaried person at the same company - sometimes is lucky enough to get, and a scheduled annual pension amount that we would love to have … yet they are worried that they will be “poor” when they retire in a few years. Yup, it’s all relative.
The Kardashians are a perfect example of why discussions of class in the US become complicated. Most would agree that the Kardashians, while rich, are pretty low class. Or, to take a more extreme example, I’m sure there are plenty of pornographers who are very wealthy indeed but no one would claim they are “upper class” or even “upper middle class,” which implies some sort of professional stature. These terms seem fairly archaic in describing what is going on in contemporary America. The increasing gap between rich and poor seems less a matter of “class,” and more just a matter of, well, money.
"I think it’s funny that someone from California is calling Michiganders status conscience.
I’m sure she would have found the same if she was going to USC or UCLA. Or Old Miss or Washington and Lee. Just to name a few."
No kidding.
There is no double an increase in salary to compensate for cost of living, but I think the specific number more relates to offering competitive salaries based on an employee’s qualifications rather than being a “good” company. For example, most would consider Google and Apple “good” companies, yet it’s quite common for engineers without much experience to have salaries of under $100k at the Bay Area divisions (engineers with more experience almost always have higher salaries). And if I look up random Bay Area companies that have poor ratings from employees, similar lower engineer job titles tend to have similar salary ranges to Google/Apple.
That’s conflating two different meanings of the word class. The discussion here is about economic class. Which often has nothing to do with behavior, obviously, but is not the same topic.
Garland, I disagree with that. In contemporary America, I think there could be innumerable definitions of “upper class” that could factor in any number of prestige markers including political, social, cultural, and economic power and influence, but I don’t think any rational definition would turn on wealth alone. Would you say a wealthy mobster or drug king-pin is part of the American “upper class”? If so, the words don’t really have much meaning. But that’s why I think the whole discussion is kind of silly – because the words are basically meaningless.
Even if you were basing a definition of “class” solely on money, you’d need a whole lot more information than just current yearly salary to determine how to divide people up. If we are talking solely about economic class, one question would surely be who has a more predictable, stable economic future ahead of them. Does a fifth-year associate in a big law firm who makes $250,000 a year but who is not going to make partner and who will be out of a job in a year make more money than a tenured professor making $120,000? Currently, sure – but the professor may well have more economic security. Neither may have a particularly large degree of social or cultural capital. Both would seem to fall in some vaguely defined “middle to upper middle” class, which has traditionally been defined in terms of professional credentials as much as money.
In any event, any system of classification who would put that fifth-year associate into the same category as someone who has, say, $100 million in liquid assets is a pretty silly classification system.
I wouldn’t call people who can seriously consider paying $60k/year for college “middle class”. According to the US Census Bureau, only ~9% of the population makes $150k or more. If people with 6-figure incomes compare themselves to those making millions, no wonder they don’t feel well-to-do. I just don’t see how they can believe they’re “middle class” when they’re making more than 91% of the rest of the country.
“I wouldn’t call people who can seriously consider paying $60k/year for college “middle class”. According to the US Census Bureau, only ~9% of the population makes $150k or more. If people with 6-figure incomes compare themselves to those making millions, no wonder they don’t feel well-to-do. I just don’t see how they can believe they’re “middle class” when they’re making more than 91% of the rest of the country”
Then would you call people who can seriously consider paying 60K/yr for college upper middle class, or what would you call them? There are many people here who have saved for years, to pay that money for college. Some who live in small houses, go on few vacations, and count their pennies. What are they?
Data10,
Didn’t the tech companies have a no poaching litigation a few years back? Do ou think that equalized the salaries across the companies in SV?
Nottelling–yes, a kingpin who makes a lot of money has an upper class income. I don’t get why you can’t imagine the word as having an economic meaning–it’s a normal way of using the word. As far as the rest of your post–that’s a different subject. But I think it’s as meaningless to conflate someone with a 250K income and someone with a 50K income, as the difference you describe. I think it’s hard for the relatively well off to imagine how different they really are from the rank and file.
IMO, those who can reasonably (yes, I completely realize this is a subjective term) spend more than the median household income on just education do not in any way qualify as middle class. Maybe upper middle class, but I’d personally put them in solidly upper class. Yes, upper class. No, not necessarily wealthy.
Only when we talk about the middle class does the definition of middle not mean middle. 
Think of the middle class the way we think of SAT scores…
A 25/75 percentile.
I don’t think it’s that hard for people to imagine. Unless someone is a trust fund baby, many people have not been born into wealth. Many people came from lower or lower middle class backgrounds, and had struggles of their own before they became financially successful. People remember. It’s a great thing about this country, that you are not stuck in the financial situation that you were born into.
^True–but that doesn’t mean they can’t acknowledge the one they have attained.
And kudos to @dstark for pointing out what should be obvious but instead what so many are oblivious to.