$250,000 a Year Is Not Middle Class
And nobody, not even Sanders, ever mentions poor people. I guess we can’t even conceive of a War on Poverty these days.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/opinion/campaign-stops/250000-a-year-is-not-middle-class.html?mwrsm=Reddit&_r=0
Mrs. Clinton is using a definition of middle class that has long been popular among Democratic policy makers, from her husband to Barack Obama when he was a candidate: any household that makes $250,000 or less a year. Yet this definition is completely out of touch with reality. It also boxes her in.
The most recent Census Bureau data showed that median household income — what people in the exact middle of the American spectrum earn — is $53,657.
Those families who make $250,000 a year, on the other hand, belong to an elite group: Americans who earn enough to be in the highest 5 percent of the income distribution. That top stratum captures anyone who makes $206,568 or more — not everyone in the so-called middle class that Mrs. Clinton says she is dedicated to protecting, but too large a chunk of it.
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Even Mr. Sanders, who often talks about income inequality, isn’t entirely immune from the allure of the $250,000 threshold. He’s ruled out middle-class tax increases except to fund paid family leave, promising to somehow get the needed revenue for his platform from banks and the very rich. And in other areas — top tax rates, Social Security payroll taxes — he adopts the $250,000 cap for no clear reason related to the policies themselves. That speaks to the spell this arbitrary limit has cast over the Democratic Party.
It’s one it needs to break. The middle-class pledge has not just been outpaced by Democrats’ policy ambition. It’s been outpaced by voters’ reality.
Over the last decade and a half, fewer and fewer Americans are identifying as middle class, and a growing share says it is working or lower class. Income inequality compresses many downward and lifts up the sliver already at the top.
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