Tag: middle class neighborhood

What is Middle Class?

$100,000 annual income is not middle class!

When people with that kind of income claim to be middle class they have grown accustomed to a different living style.  They simply cannot relate to those of us in the middle class.

ABC News brought up the subject last night (August 6, 2013).  However, after asking the question, Diane Sawyer provided no answer.  It seems to have evolved from comments by the president.  He too did not define middle class.  ABC did offer some measurements on its website.

Their take is your income must be at least $32,900 per year for a family of four that includes two children.  The upper limit, they say, is $64,000.  The median household income in the United   States was $52,029 in 2011 so this range appears to be reasonable.  The US government considers the poverty line at $23,550.

San Fernando Valley - Typical Middle Class Home
San Fernando Valley – Typical Middle Class Home

So when your brother-in-law pulls into your driveway with a new Lexus and lives like money is no problem he is one of the lucky few.

Mitt Romney Does Not Understand American Life

If you grew up in a poor neighborhood that is the environment you understand.  Likewise if you grew up in a neighborhood of the well to do that is also the world you understand.  I grew up in a very middle class neighborhood and my perceptions are based upon that environment.  I never missed meal and I never went without shoes in that 1250 square foot three bedroom home.

The Associated Press reports: “Mitt Romney says he learns about what it’s like to struggle in a difficult economy by sitting down to chat with regular people. But the Republican presidential candidate doesn’t want anybody to see it — and his campaign won’t say who he meets with or when the meetings occur.”

“Before I begin an event like this, I typically am able to sit down with a few people on an off-the-record kinda basis,” Romney said as he delivered his standard campaign speech Friday in Pittsburgh.

 Mitt Romney’s annual yearly income is over $20 million.  He has off shore accounts to minimize his income tax.  I doubt anyone reading this column has any accounts outside the United States(Unless you live outside the United States).  The Census Bureau says the median household income in the USA from 2006-2010 was $51,914.  Arithmetic Median Definition: Median is the middle value of the given numbers or distribution in their ascending order.

Mitt Romney can hear about the issues of the average American for the rest of his life but he has never had to say “we can’t afford that” or heard your spouse asking if there is enough in the budget to pay for some new curtains or new shoes this month.

Yesterday’s issue for me was getting the lights turned on after an electrical malfunction.  The initial price to do the job right was over $4,000.  The final cost just to get the lights working was $352.  Mr. Romney would have done the $4,000 job.

Mr. Romney’s problem is that he really doesn’t have to face the life of a typical American citizen.  There is no way he can understand. Isn’t he lucky?