<p>I think some of you are underestimating the value of job benefits and taxes on the employer.</p>
<p>If you make $50K/year, your employer is paying 6.2% for social security, so add $3100/year. Add another 1.45% for medicare ($725). Add about $300/month if you get employer-paid health insurance (and $300/month would not be a great policy) and another $100/month for employer-paid dental and vision (so: 4800/year). Vacation pay adds another 5% (10 days off) and so does sick pay (10 days/year), so another $5000. </p>
<p>Some employers also provide pensions and disability benefits. Some just provide a good cup of coffee every day (but that adds up too… our small business pays about $100/month to provide a water cooler and coffee to our employees).</p>
<p>We haven’t even accounted for the state taxes that some employers have to pay and we’ve reached an added cost of almost $18000 on a paycheck that is nominally $50000.</p>
<p>Doctormom: yes, traditional pensions have nearly disappeared. They are available mostly to union and government employees like police, fire, teachers… which is why the cost of a state employee (cited by your professor at $39/hour) is so high.</p>
<p>My point is that even the most minimal benefits–social security, medicare–cost a lot to the employer. Every employer must provide those benefits. Add in the basic benefits package of sick and vacation time, minimal health insurance, and family leave, and the employer is paying about double the hourly rate the employee receives.</p>
<p>Benefits can be alot but most companies dont have pensions anymore & my daughter is just one American who works a scant 30 minutes a week too short to qualify for any benefits.(outside of ss and medicare- which she pays for)</p>
<p>And example a principal who came from Chicago 5 years ago, but the district couldn’t find a place where the school community would accept her, but principal union forced them to find her a job so they bumped her upstairs.
she makes $95,500 and benefits are $21,200, for a year round position</p>
<p>EK, I could not quite follow your principal example, but I can tell you that in our school district, it is not unusual for a teacher to hit 95,000 in salary after perhaps 15 years (give or take) of teaching. In other words, there are teachers in their late 30’s and early 40’s earning 95,000. When these salaries are quoted, I don’t know if benefits are added to that, or the 95k includes those benefits, and that would be a huge difference, as you just pointed out. Whatever the salary, most of the teachers stay on, so I guess they are pleased with their jobs and salaries.</p>
<p>$150,000 per year is middle class on this forum but not in this country. In some locations a family with high state/local taxes and high cost of housing and living, $150,000 doesn’t go that far if the family is paying for college, or even a big piece of college. The time of life issues are enormous; my wife and I made about 20% of what we make now when we joined the professional work force (not first jobs, but first managerial jobs!). But this level of stress and output is not sustainable over a lifetime, so we may be back to 20% by the time we retire. Right now we have the money to pay for college (since we’ve always been savers), so why not do it? You can’t take it with you. So we invest in the kid’s college. We don’t vacation much, don’t drink, aren’t into fancy cars.</p>
<p>When our kids were born, we knew all of these couples like us with little kids. Now we know all of these couples with “high” incomes and college costs, struggling to balance college, retirement, helping their parents, etc.</p>
<p>$150,000 per year is very middle class at a certain point in your life.</p>
<p>EK4:
Any wage earner pays 6.2% of income in social security tax and 1.45% of income in medicare tax. The employer pays an additional 6.2% of income for social security and 1.45% for medicare. Thus, a total of 12.4% + 2.9% (15.3%) of income goes for social security and medicare, paid jointly by the employer and employee. Thus, an employee receiving $10,000/year (before taxes) costs the employer $11,530/year.</p>
<p>I think it is all about buying houses.
When I see the cost of a house in city after city, not just California or Washington or the NE, but places like Indiana, it makes $150,000 look like $75,000. BUT I came from a family where I was the first person to have a real mortgage, everyone else in my family built their homes the old fashioned way, sort of pay as you go, with a bank loan maybe to cover the last bit to get the house finished.</p>
<p>$95000 for a teacher!!! I’ll put DH back to work. With a Masters and 14 years of experience, he barely got over $40000</p>
<p>I think the problem here is that Americans don’t think of “middle class” as being middle or median income. Americans think of middle class as everybody who isn’t poor or rich. In other words, not the middle 20% or even 50% of households, but more like the middle 80% of households. Of course, I don’t know if $150,000 would even be in that band, but I’ll bet people earning that amount think it is.</p>
<p>the info I have regarding principal salary is total salary but benefits are separate although calculated.</p>
<p>Principals actually earn often more, because they don’t come into the district as a principal but have been with the district longer, this principal relocated to follow her husband who was hired as security staff.
My daughters principal earns $107, 000 not counting benefits and he deserves every penny. He works long long hours and is dedicated to the community.</p>
<p>It sounds like the key to the successful American middle class family life really is endurance. If you remain in the same house, same job, even same marriage, only very carefully making changes, it does tend to help make the ends meet over time - only just barely. And, add stay healthy to that list.</p>
<p>And, where are teachers making $95K? We’re moving! (so much for endurance…)</p>
<p>My stepniece, right out of college and without a masters degree, earned $125k plus benefits as a high school math teacher on the North Shore of Long Island in her first year. They also paid for her masters degree, and she now earns close to $150k. </p>
<p>They aren’t even close to being middle class.</p>
<p>It’s not so much income that defines middle class for me as lifestyle. My parents both worked at what are solidly middle-class careers (the one where you get summers off ). They managed to buy a house in a wonderful area in a major city, sent all of their children through well thought of public 4-year colleges (and in some cases grad school), and are enjoying a financially comfortable retirement. Their employer provided a pension and generous health care; one of my siblings alone had medical bills that were in the six figures which were covered by insurance. </p>
<p>Living in this same area, could another couple with the same type of middle class jobs manage this nowadays? Possible, I suppose, but tough. My parents had less (inflation adjusted) income than my spouse and I do, but our benefits aren’t as generous. A large chunk of that larger income goes towards things that were “included” in that long-ago middle-class lifestyle. </p>
<p>On the other hand, my parents had to make do without the internet, Magic Erasers, DVDs, kiwi fruit, smoke-free hotel rooms and cars that had no crumple zones or airbags, to name a few things, so there have been a few compensations.</p>
<p>J"yes, traditional pensions have nearly disappeared. They are available mostly to union and government employees like police, fire, teachers… which is why the cost of a state employee (cited by your professor at $39/hour) is so high."</p>
<p>Exactly. Here in NYC, those pensions haven’t disappeared. Hubby is 20-and-out with 2/3 state and city tax free pension, lifetime medical/dental/prescription and a large annuity. THis is mostly the case for city workers and it’s a huge drain on those of us in the private sector.</p>
<p>My Mom was a NYC teacher who retired over 20 years ago. Her portfolio is now close to $1.4m (down $200k from last year) and her monthly benefits are a healthy $6k a month - she doesn’t need to touch the portfolio at all, so it keeps rolling over. She recently came back from a cruise that passed through Cape Horn and got to see the melting glaciers first hand. She called it okay, but a “been to”. And, she’s been all over Africa, and Asia - not too crazy about Europe - too ordinary for her. She sure hated teaching tho, so it’s nice to see her enjoying the benefits The union sure knows how to do its job up there, and the schools are a whole lot better than down here.</p>
<p>“My Mom was a NYC teacher who retired over 20 years ago. Her portfolio is now close to $1.4m (down $200k from last year) and her monthly benefits are a healthy $6k a month - she doesn’t need to touch the portfolio at all, so it keeps rolling over. She recently came back from a cruise that passed through Cape Horn and got to see the melting glaciers first hand. She called it okay, but a “been to”. And, she’s been all over Africa, and Asia - not too crazy about Europe - too ordinary for her. She sure hated teaching tho, so it’s nice to see her enjoying the benefits The union sure knows how to do its job up there, and the schools are a whole lot better than down here.”</p>
<p>Sounds like my mother’s twin. Cruises two or three times a year. Hubby is a retired pharmacist. Between them they are multimillionaires. Meanwhile, the median individual retires with little more than Social Security (and has that thanks to immigrants paying huge amounts into Social Security year afrer year without ever collecting, and African-Americans - especially males - dying before they can ever collect a penny, in a massive wealth transfer.)</p>
<p>I think the reason Mini’s relative is such a highly paid teacher is because she teaches math (as well as the location). Good math and science teachers are in short supply.
In our district we have collective bargaining- so everyone is paid according to seniority and hours.</p>
<p>Mini once again repeats his lie that blacks are not getting a net benefit from SS. When you add in SS disability payments they are net winners.
Now if you want to cite illegals–maybe that would be true.</p>
). They managed to buy a house in a wonderful area in a major city, sent all of their children through well thought of public 4-year colleges (and in some cases grad school), and are enjoying a financially comfortable retirement. Their employer provided a pension and generous health care; one of my siblings alone had medical bills that were in the six figures 
which were covered by insurance. </p>