Thieves at WDW

[Westcoastwild]

How can you be in the top 5% for income and be middle class? If you classify middle class by lifestyle rather than income then plenty of people in Seattle that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars are "middle class".

Again, depends on where you are and what the cost of living is and how you define middle class. This link, for example, makes the upper bounds of middle class income around 150,000.

http://money.cnn.com/infographic/economy/what-is-middle-class-anyway/

Which is about right. Let's say two established lawyers or two engineers would make that much money.

Someone on that income bracket may live comfortably in Seattle but struggle a bit more in NYC or SF. On the other hand, that income would go a lot further in a poorer state. It's one of the reasons my parents are suburbanites- they value size of house over location.

And I say "may" because choices like sending your kids to private schools or college or even how many kids that involves definitely impacts how much of that income goes into savings or investments at all. My parents friends who made a bit less, had fewer kids, and essentially kicked said kids out at 18 are much better off in terms of savings.

Saying that a person who make 100-200k is the same as someone who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars is kind of ridiculous though. Because most of that 100,000 is going towards the basic col that involves raising a family.

If you've got a couple that makes 60000 in Seattle, well, they'll be struggling a lot more in terms of buying a house, but they'll be making roughly the same budget choices the family that makes twice their amount. They'll be looking at the same neighborhoods, extracurricular activities. So to me both of those families are middle class. They have more in common with each other than they do with people who make much less or much more.

 

[godders]

In the UK:
upper class are the gentry - those who have hereditary titles or related to those who have hereditary titles
upper middle class - those who attend elite schools, sit in the same social circles as the gentry, live/grew up in houses worth over £1.5 mill (people like Kate Middleton)
middle class - live in properties worth over £600,000, can attend private or state schools, grow up in suburbs/gentrified areas, university attendance presumed from birth,
working class - everyone else

Obviously there are no hard or fast rules when it comes to class systems but that's probably a loose guide to how it kind of works here. Doesn't have anything to do with income as the sole factor. My friends and I are all middle class but we can't afford to buy property or even the "affordable" homes in the area where we grew up. Doesn't mean we're not middle class. Similarly there are people who have been knighted like Sir Alan Sugar (the host of The Apprentice here) who is also now a billionaire but is still working class.

As for the woman in the who had her stroller stolen - some people just don't have common sense or have to learn stuff the hard way. I feel sorry for her but not too sorry because she can afford a $1800 stroller