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Even households earning $150,000 a year are struggling with credit card and car payments
(www.cbsnews.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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$150k household income is not enough to afford a house, middle class standard of living, children, and retirement savings since you don't have a pension. at least in my area.
it'll get you lower middle class, maybe.
I'm not saying these people should be having money issues, they need to budget appropriately. but what used to be possible 20 years ago just isn't now, you need to choose one big thing to drop, whether that's a detached house, children, expensive hobbies, trips, etc
there's too much shifting of the goal posts for what middle class is, I think it has slipped too far downwards
Imo the entire concept of the middle class should be abandoned as capitalist propaganda. There's the rich and there's the working class. Anything else is a distraction to keep us from focusing on the rich stealing from the workers. Bezos owns a $500,000,000 yacht while thousands of his employees rely on government assistance programs which are funded by taxes he doesn't even pay.
Owning class, working class and then you do have a mid point of worker/owner class. Their money comes partly from their labour but also partly from their wealth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie ?
Those at the midpoint still have to work to live, so they are working class. 🤷
At some point it's more that they want the extra money than they have to work, and they own so they are also the owning class
If they don't have to work to live, they're no longer working class (Musk still works at Tesla, but clearly doesn't need to). But I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that those who derive their wealth from the labor of workers but who can't afford a yacht should be treated differently than billionaires? I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have progressive tax rates, I'm only saying that an arbitrarily defined 'middle class' exists solely so that you and I are distracted by exactly these discussions, and provides no benefit to determining what is justifiable economic policy.
children? when we've hit the climate crisis tipping point? no thanks, i'd rather not bring people into this world who are going to die a painful death from a climate related catastrophe.
It feels like the whole world has been an externalized cost for the very rich.