Just where is the Middle Class located?

That would depend on where one resides. $97k in Cali is barely above poverty. $97k in Oklahoma is a kings ransom. I lived in Fresno CA for 1.5 years. Any home I would buy cost $450 - 600k. Property tax there is 1.2% of the purchase price per year. Fresno is the LOW COST area of Cali.

Its interesting when you do some math about actual wages paid in America . Averages are reached when you include all wages and would seem to indicate that Americans are making 42,000 or so a year on average .

Lets have some fun and do some math .

Tom Cruz makes a movie and earns 20,000,000 dollars .

So consider this . He attended school with 29 other students .

Those students today earn wages of 100,000 a year each and are doing better then average by most accounts .

Now add in Toms wage of 20 million to the class mates who made 2.9 million and we have a wages of 22.9 million divided by 30 students and we now have an average wage of around $700,000.00 .

Truth is when you combine the incomes of several million multi million dollar income earners to the general population you artificially increase the average wage substantially .

Most people you meet are earning much less then 40,000 a year . Thats just south of $20.00 an hour .

This nation has just under 1000 billionaires . If they all paid 200 million each thats only 200 billion and the budget is much higher each year and as we know they pay nothing like 100 million in taxes each year .

To collect a tax something of real value has to be produced .

Money does not produce anything of real value so each time we print more the value of the dollar drops .

The average income in 1910 was 10,000 dollars a year . Today that is the equal of earning 278,000 .

So tell me if the average guy today is doing better then he was 100 years ago .

The middle class needs to be located at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington DC.

This is a little tricky. The middle class is over yonder. Where is yonder you ask, it's where you ain't. I would consider a person entering the low end of middle-class at forty-two thousand a year. High end, two hundred grand a year. Anyone making twenty to forty grand a year are Americans on the edge, one or two unexpected events away from losing their piece of America.

The median income in the US is 41 grand.

Now if you have all benefit's at that job"health care, a pension, paid time off, sick leave" and you make 41 grand a yeaer you do all right.

Now if you have that income but none of those benefit's and you have a couple kids... Its real hard to get by...

Have the Cons cut education that much that you can't see that you can have different situations.

If you don't understand what "highest rate that needs help" means, I suggest you start back at about 4th grade and just do school all over again.

But i would think if you want to make things real difficult for people watching tv to understand, then you can go into all the...according to the standard of living in this state and that this income is at the level blah blah blah, but you definitely aren't going to fit an answer into a 3 minute response time during a debate.

There is an upper and a lower middle class. The term "middle class" is typically defined as a household with an annual income between $33,300 and $55,000. Apx. 20% of American households are "middle class". Within the middle class, the upper middle class is apx. 10% to 15%, the lower middle class is apx. 30% to 35%.

For some reason all of the Liberal Mecca's are to expensive for a common person to make ends meet.

$97,000 annually gives a personal a wonderful life in the red states.

by the tax code, middle class is two incomes, making more than 52,000 a year. which is most two income homes with high school graduates. the poverty level is only 15,000 a year, no matter how many incomes you have. one person working a minimum wage job, making only 40 hrs a week, makes just less than that. so i would say that if you work anyplace for more than a year, you would not be living below the poverty level. if you try, you should be able to be 'middle class'.

its a bit confusing but a middle income person would be classified as having a salary between 40k to 65k.

Taking the lowest salary into account of a family, (Both working parents) that would be $80,0000 more or less. That would be my guess.

I'm middle class American and love this country. I will never vote for a Democrat so long as their math is so different from my reality. They don't speak for me, and it offends me when any Democrat claims to represent me.