I’ve met a lot of people who think of themselves as “upper middle class” when in reality, they are in the top 10% and they have a very comfortable lifestyle. Some people will downplay their wealth to be more relatable to others, but many people are just genuinely ignorant about how wealthy they really are.
(Just so you know, statistically to be in the top 10% of earners in the USA, you will need to make an income of $158k.)
Edit: lots of good points made about net worth. According to the US Census Bureau, the median net worth of someone in the upper middle class is $201,800. This of course can vary based on factors like age and location. You can read more about how wealth is broken down in the USA here: https://www.thebalance.com/american-middle-class-net-worth-3973493
Been living here for about 4 years now. Coming from way upstate in a much LCOL area. A duo income of $180k and we feel like we can barely save down here. This amount of money would be considered pretty damn good from where I am from but doesn’t seem to do much more than make ends meet on LI. So my question to y’all is what income is considered middle class here? $300k? I am grateful for what we make and I know that is more than many but it’s just crazy to me we can hardly save for a house DP. Btw we live super frugal and have low rent $1.9k
160k for two adults? 80k for one adult? 300k for two adults and 2 kids?
What are your thoughts on when a person is considered upper middle class?
Listening to the report that Americans are saving more than ever. I live an improvised area. I myself have skimmed by in a lower middle class neighborhood but eviction notices over the course of the pandemic have been on literally every other house or apartment… I love the programming on npr but my god do they come off as broadcasting from an ivory tower sometimes!
Examples of sitcoms include: Hazel, the Brady Bunch, Mr. Belvedere, the Fresh Prince, Jetsons.
Since I can’t relate, so many questions come to mind. Here are a few:
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Did middle class families really have maids/butlers in the 60s, 70s, and 80s? Are there any statistics on this?
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Why did they live in the home, rather than a nearby house or apartment?
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Were they on payroll or 1099?
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Did they really wear maid/butler uniforms? Did the maid/butler select their own uniform, or did the family dictate what was worn?
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When and why did families stop employing maids or butlers?
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How much did they get paid in today’s money?
Thanks for any and all replies. I asked this question a few years ago, but there were no answers that mods didn’t remove.
Living in Cape Town. For an example if I go to a lower class neighbourhood like Bonteheuwel I see a lot of kids playing outside. While in Goodwood a middle class neighbourhood despite being a safer neighbourhood you barely see any kids playing outside.
So I grew up pretty average, except my parents sort of spoiled me in the financial sense. I never did dishes, cleaned, never had chores. If I broke a phone I could get a new one almost right then. They also bailed my stupid ass out of 12k of credit debt, due to me trying to move out and the pandemic hitting right after+the onset of violent depressive episodes.
I just want to learn how to be self sufficient and have self control. It seems so hard and confusing to have an apartment and pay all of the seperate bills, then study and do my part time college work, then clean, then do laundry, etc etc. I have 0 attention span and forget things almost immediately and often just don't have any motivation
Even if COVID hadn't hit back in 2020, I still would have failed at living on my own because I just get so overwhelmed. This is also something I deal with in school, I can't focus or grasp basic concepts and freak the hell out over everything.
Basically, my friend (19M) is always trying to tell our other friend (18M) he has no business being in college and treats him like he’s a fool for wanting to be educated.
Our other friend has a trust fund that will become available to him when he’s like 21 or something, so my friend is always berating him for going to college, saying anyone with money who “wastes time” in college is in idiot when they don’t need a job, so they don’t need a degree. He basically thinks our friend is a sucker since our friend is smart and wants to do academic research.
He constantly brings it up and is all like “dude, you’re such a sucker. What kind of idiot goes to college if they don’t need to to get a job.”
And I pointed out to my friend that this is the difference between people like him and wealthy or even upper-middle class people. They always will send their children to college, and their children grow up knowing they will attend college, because it’s an expectation that you are educated. It’s not optional. I told my friend that they have their prioritized in check and people who think like him don’t.
My parents aren’t wealthy at all, but I’ve always known it’s an expectation to be educated, and I’ve known I would be going to college and grad school since I was a little kid. The same with most kids at my school, which was a regular suburban public school.
My friend reminds me of all my dad’s relatives who simultaneously shit on him for being the only college educated person in his family, while constantly begging and demanding his money. And I told him so.
My friend was like “haha, you’re stupid too if you’d go to college despite not needing too.”
What are some QoL improvements you folks made when you were in a similar situation?
These are some of the things I have done or planning to -
- Get the house repaired - fungus/mold removal, fixing chipped corners, termite removal etc
- Get a heater - for winters
- Get a bigger TV - easy on the eyes of my older folks
- Get a dishwasher - saves a lot of mummy's time
- Get "2-tone" LEDs for bedrooms - white-ish in morning/evening, yellowish at night
- Get good mattresses
- Get inclined pillows - easy on the spine and neck
- Get an electric massager - temporary (joint) pain relief for my older folks
In the past many poor immigrants came to Canada, but over time if they worked hard, got an education, and saved, they could buy a house and become middle class - and if not them, their kids did. As a result many Canadian born desis are from middle / upper middle class backgrounds thanks to the hard work of their parents.
However in the past 5 years the house prices in Canada are out of control. Our family house has gone 4x in 20 years - our household income has gone up 1.3x. even university educated jobs only make 60-100k, which is nothing when a house costs 900k at least. And everywhere is expensive other than tiny towns with no jobs, not just major cities. Minimum wage can buy you a shared bedroom with 2-3 other international students.
It seems like upward mobility is gone in Canada, if you can have money when you come here it's great, but it seems like it's not possible for immigrants to move up the economic ladder anymore. And the super high prices are just getting started- it wasn't until 2016 and then 2020 that it really got out of control. So we haven't seen all the effects on future generations yet in this small time frame.
AMA!
I don’t know where I am. Probably middle class. It would be helpful to know though so I know whose advice to listen to.
Demographics:
Gender: Male
Race/ethnicity: Mexican
Income Bracket: no financial aid needed
State: CA
Type of school: Competitive Private
Hooks: URM, parent Yale law graduate (legacy?)
Intended major(s): Engineering and Engineering Schools where applicable
Academics:
- Did not take or submit test scores
- Class rank: school doesn’t rank
- UW/W GPA: 3.78 UW
- Coursework: School doesn’t offer AP’s, taken honors chem, English and history.
- Awards: National Hispanic Scholar
Extracurriculars:
- Texas A & M Geoscience Program: free, selective program sophomore summer
- Stanford Earth Young Investigator: free, selective program junior summer
- Food Bank Delivery
- Mountain Biking
- Yoga Practice
- Independent Japanese Language Study
Schools: All RD
- Yale
- Princeton
- Brown
- Cornell
- Northeastern
- UCB (MET)
- UCLA
- UCD
- UCSC
- UCM
- UCR
- UCSB
- UCI
- UCSD
- Cal Poly SLO
- Cal Poly Pomona
- SDSU
- Santa Clara
- Loyola Marymount
- University of San Diego
- Questions/Comments: I‘ve been kind of a loner during high school which the pandemic only made worse. I didn’t allude to it in the special section of the Common App because everyone was affected by Covid. I do think my essays are killer, though. I’m really looking forward to living in a dorm situation and connecting with people more. Any predictions or advice will be greatly appreciated.
So I was wondering if anyone can relate. I grew up rough…I lived in Oakland for a while and before that I lived in Bay Point CA (nicknamed “Gun Point” because, well, people shot each other a lot). I’ve had my house shot at a couple times, been robbed, held at gun point, you name it. I have heard gunshots so often that I’ve become desensitized to them. Usually my reaction to a firearm discharge is “ah well they aren’t shooting me so it’s fine”. I even lived out of my car for a while. My parents were disasters of human beings, mom was negligent and father was abusive, and my father did not want me to go to college. He kicked me out of the house, hence my homeless-in-my-car life. Despite all this, I managed to get a degree in molecular biology. Fast forward to today, I have a nice townhouse in an affluent neighborhood and a fancy job as a senior research associate and a lab manager. I have a beautiful baby and a firmware engineer husband. We are firmly upper middle class basic bitches. And it’s great. Needless to say, I don’t quite fit into the culture. Some of my coworkers have insanely rich parents, lot of them had their college paid for, they’re all about prestige and gucci and whatever. Here I come, all rough around the edges and struggling to be “professional”. Please someone tell me I’m not alone in this. I need advice about this extreme case of imposter syndrome. My “rough” vernacular gets raised eyebrows and I am trying to not do that.
Thanks to my profession I travel a lot. And in West Africa I notice that among the middle and upper class English (or French) has totally replaced native African languages. The transition took place over a few generations and is ultimately rooted in the predominance of English in education and white-collar careers (government, corporate, medical etc.). And after a few generations it created a growing generation of West African youth who now speak English as their mother tongue. They often have very limited fluency in African languages and only use them when speaking to servants or the elderly.
As I think back to India, I feel we're now maybe a generation or two behind the West Africans. But the transition is surely taking place. Of course no language is "pure" and English has infused into all language. But some more than others. You listen to a conversation between to two urban educated Koreans or Germans and you will hear maybe 2-3 English words in the entire discussion. But for Indians it's closer to 30%-50%. For example, whenever main YouTube par jata hun to find a video na, hamesha 70% english mein hote hain. Matlab they'll be talking in English and kabhi kabhi Hindi words use karte hain.
Even when we think we're speaking just Hindi (or any other Indian language) we still use a large number of English words. And I'm not just talking about slang or technical terms that have no local equivalent. For example, main aaj office mein bahut busy thi, unexpected kaam aa gaya, isliye ghar late pahunchi.
To add to this, many seldom read in their native tongue almost always opting for English. I gave a Hindi novel to a cousin and she rejected it saying reading in Hindi is a pain, despite it being her mother tongue (technically). I heard another friend in his twenties say he was really impressed that I knew how to say even big numbers in Hindi. Again, another person whose mother tongue is Hindi and who was born and raised in India. This cohort is small (I know) but it's growing with every year.
There's even a class component, recently as a challenge to myself I decided to speak my Hindi with as few English words as possible and I was asked not to by co-workers (Hindi is there mother tongue) who found it irritating to follow and said I sounded simple-minded. To clarify I wasn't writing my work emails in devanagari or something, but even in casual conversations they were more comfortable in Hinglish or even English but not Hindi.
It makes me w
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Background:
I'm a middle aged, cis-het white man who has been reflecting on my efforts in the past five years to contribute to meaningful social change. I spent five years participating in several groups that approached justice mainly from a racial lens, although sometimes we applied gender analysis, too.
About a year ago I also began volunteering with a housing justice group. That work eventually helped me realize how my lack of class analysis was significantly getting in the way of my contributing to any meaningful change. Capitalism is at the root of so much of the injustice I see all around me, and I need to address that directly. (Just to be clear, I don't want to abandon racial justice or gender justice. It's just that I'm starting to believe racial and gender justice efforts without class analysis may lack substance.)
I am quite a beginner when it comes to understanding class and all things related to r/Socialism_101.
Question:
The reason I am reaching out is because, from my beginner's perspective, I am having a hard time finding examples of middle class or upper-middle class people (I am one of these, I believe) contributing meaningfully to class justice. Might anyone be able to help me in this regard?
My main sources of learning so far have been various podcasts from Jacobin (I believe not all of the hosts and guests are socialist but some are?) and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book about the Combahee River Collective.
The podcasts give me the sense that the working class needs to engage in its own struggle and does not need to (and perhaps should not?) ally itself with the middle class or the wealthy. I may not be understanding this clearly, though, because many of the people saying this seem to be professors and journalists, and these days aren't most professors and journalists part of the middle class?
The book about the Combahee River Collective describes how Barbara Smith and other members formed working-class solidarity bonds across racial lines. It describes collaboration across the gender spectrum--sexual orientation, too. I did not find any explicit examples, though, of alliances between working class and middle class people.
It may be the case that middle class and upper middle class people can play no meaningful role, but I'm hoping that's not the case? I do not like the status quo, and capitalism appears to be maintaining much if not all of the status quo, so I am hoping there are meaningful ways I can collaborate w
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm going to explain why this question came to mind, but I'll put a TLDR down below for those who don't care.
My community/neighborhood has an anarchist reading group of about 50-60 young adults. Not everyone comes to every meeting, but we usually get together on weekends to discuss theory and talk about current sociopolitical events through a cultural lens.
This past weekend, we had an incident that has kinda made me reassess my standing with the group. Basically, tempers flared a little bit as we discussed this question: do you see anarchism as feasible/attainable, or do you see it as more of a useful thought experiment for assessing/critiquing the world around us?
I stayed quiet throughout the argument but some people got really mad at each other and one member roasted the rest of us. This individual, who is a POC, noted that the group is majority white, from upper/middle class upbringings, living in a gentrified community, with good jobs, formal education, etc. He also noted that even the other POC in the group were from privileged upbringings (I think he was speaking in the strictly economical sense, or so I assume based on what I know about our community). He accused us (and the anarchist community generally) of basically being a bunch of virtue signalers, who would never sacrifice our comfortable lives if it really came down to it.
This made me do some serious self reflection these past few days. I don't think he's entirely right, but I also don't think he is entirely wrong, either. All things considered, I have a pretty great life. Partner, kids, a job that I consider fulfilling, etc. Would I give it all up, and would I be a terrible person if I wouldn't? But it also made me wonder - is his claim that anarchists are mostly just educated/privileged white kids true? And if it is, how can we change that?
TLDR: A member of my anarchist reading group called us virtue signalers and said the anarchist movement will never achieve anything because it's just a bunch of privileged white kids with no support from the working class. So... is there support among the working class? And if not, how can I best support the working class by making theory, etc. accessible to them?
I just keep hearing this from multiple people and now am seeing this on reddit too. Just wanted some honest opinions from people who have experienced living in both lifestyles.
Ultra rich is politicians n celebrities where they literally need not pay for anything because ppl around them like to be in their good books.
Middle class is more like have enough to survive and occasional high like buying a car or bike.
What qualifies for upper middle n rich, and when can we call oneself rich truly?
I have to keep a lot of this private and vague, but yeah, after years of what I thought was my husband having a successful career, he was arrested for embezzlement and fraud, will do jail time, and will be paying restitution forever and will probably never get a decent job ever again. No court case because he confessed so he got a reduced sentence, but our lives are still utterly destroyed. Vague on ages for privacy but I have a baby I was pregnant with when he was first arrested and a toddler.
I was ambivalent about having kids. I will straight up admit I was totally put off by the idea of being up all night with them and toilet training, but I like older elementary aged kids and teenagers and the idea of adult kids. But little kids are a no. Growing up I used to say I wish the stork could bring 6 year olds (obviously not understanding bonding). We could afford a full time nanny, and I’d have NEVER agreed to have kids without a nanny. We had to let go of the nanny and I’m stuck doing everything I never ever wanted to do. Late nights, literal shit, spit up, and I’m so depressed and regretful. I’m so angry he was dishonest with me because I feel like I was tricked into this life. I like being a mom less than I thought I would even with the help, and being a mom is utterly unbearable without the help.
I’m now broke because everything has to be sold for restitution and was fair game since it was in both names. I have a college degree and can earn an OK living and don’t have student loans & they can’t reverse the payments, but I can’t afford to be a single parent in the NYC metro area and I’m most likely going to have to move back to my deeply conservative red home state so my mom can help with the kids and I’m devastated.
I HATE it there & she doesn’t even live in a city, I grew up in a bumfuck town 90 mins away from civilisation and even that civilisation is a Trumpie town “haven for the unborn” with ~100k people. I’ll have to take a job way below my qualifications out there. I’m going to have to find a way to put them through college when my husband was supposedly comfortable enough to that it wouldn’t have been a concern and promised me that. I’m so resentful. I’ll unlikely find another partner because I don’t want to be a stepmom & it will be hard to find a man who wants to be a dad to my kids. And in my home area, I’m not going to like the type of men who live there that all. I’m not “pro gun pro god, pro trump” and “fuck your feelings
... keep reading on reddit ➡First I wanna make it clear that she has never made me coming from a poorer household a problem in anyway. I use to live pretty well up until my parent decided to seperate. Sometimes I don't feel good enough to be with her because I come from a lower income household. I've never made it clear on how i feel insecure about it because I don't wanna come of as ashamed of my self or unconfident since i know that will definitely bring our relationship to an end. She also travels alot more then I do and that makes me feel like my life is boring compared to hers, like she'll meet some better cooler guy somewhere and completely forget about me.
Shes def the quiet type so I don't think she'd do something like that to me. She asked me what I wanted out of our relationship, dating wise I told her that I wanted something long term she seemed to light up and told me she felt the same. She tells me about how she thinks about me all the time and wants to spend time together all the time. I've been told by her many times that she thinks she's clingy but I don't see it. The time we went to her house just to spend time together made me feel a little inferior to her since I wouldn't be able to give her the same experience if she came over to mine. Also because my family isn't the best when it come to keep the house up to par. I would feel super embarrassed and ashamed if she ever even stepped foot in my house.
Maybe I'm just over thinking small issues that I worry constantly about. I feel like I don't have enough money or the fact that I can't drive yet brings me down too when thinking about her since she take me since she out but drives illegally. I think I bring nothing to the table as her boyfriend, except the compassion I give to her. I make her feel like she's my baby girl, If i didn't have that I think she would of moved on a long time ago
I've been a big advocate for the US getting high speed rail in areas like the Northeast corridor, amongst other areas such as the current California one and Texas Triangle, etc.
But my friend asked "who will actually use it to commute"? And he brought up the fact that the only people who would do that are high-wage workers such as lawyers and finance professionals commuting for example from Boston to NYC, DC to NYC, vice versa etc. It actually kind of makes sense and I can't think of any argument at the moment that refutes that. I tried some googling too and I can't find any studies that look into if it actually benefits the poor and working class.
Metro-based systems (buses and subways) for sure benefit the poor and working class...but what about high speed rail? At least for distances of 200-300 miles, such as in the Northeast corridor? Who in the poor/working class would commute from Boston/DC to NYC?
