In part our notion of what is middle income has been skewed downward by the past two generations in which capital has stolen most of the increase in national income from the bottom 99%. First, a typical definition of the top of middle income would be double the median household income adjusted for household size. As of last year that was…
In part our notion of what is middle income has been skewed downward by the past two generations in which capital has stolen most of the increase in national income from the bottom 99%. First, a typical definition of the top of middle income would be double the median household income adjusted for household size. As of last year that was $183k for a 3 person household, so about $106k for 1 person or $236k for a family of 5. If you instead set the top of the middle class at 2x the median household income in 1970, and scale income with GDP per capita instead of inflation (i.e. distribute economic gains through wages as from 1946-1970 instead of allowing them to be concentrated as wealth), the top of the middle class would be at roughly $275k for an individual, $478k for a family of 3. The bottom of the middle class, i.e. the top edge of “poor” if held at the share of the pie for a household with 2/3rds median income in 1970, would be $91k for an individual in 2023. We have collectively been pushed out of the middle class and into lower income brackets by the collective action of the wealthy to concentrate income and assets in only a few hands over the past two generations. When we see folks making $400k as “them” rather than “us” we are mistaking the situation. They are just the luckiest of us, but all of us are and have been being slowly squeezed into serfdom by the folks making $400mil.
I make way less than your bottom of the middle class and always have, and I'd happily pay $1,500 more per year in taxes in exchange for universal no-cost healthcare. It's not about wealthier workers being "them"; it's about people being better able to pay some more for the common good, which is a collective responsibility.
The collective responsibility should include us seeing that you are paid better, not charging you for the failure of the elite to hold up their end of the stick. We need to tax the rich, but not just tax them, stop their theft from us: raise wages, save money on healthcare while making it universal, etc. The time for broad based taxes to meet societal needs is when income and wealth is broadly shared. For now, soak the rich.
If you want to create an economy in which there are full-time tenured positions for everyone with a Doctorate and all music gigs pay at least $100/hr, with benefits, go for it, but I can easily survive on my current income, as long as I have almost no medical expenses, though other expenses can be challenging and who knows what I'll make next year?
Forgive my presumption, but am I right in thinking you have a long ago rent controlled apartment cushioning the comfort level of your cash income? If you had to pay market rate for housing would you still characterize your income as you do? I think housing should be broadly cheaper than “market rates” in an artificial supply shortage, but I also think you, and most people, are underpaid.
Rent stabilized. That's correct. If I had to pay $3,000/month, I couldn't make it as a musician. The lack of sufficient housing, and particularly affordable housing, is a huge crisis in this country. That's another reason to tax people more according to their ability to pay: to launch a crash program of public housing nationwide. Providing people with more money doesn't solve a problem of scarcity.
benamery21, did I delete your reply by mistake by deleting a double post? If so, sorry. (I now see that that didn't happen.) But my reply to you is that I don't need to have a guaranteed income of $91K and don't think that only the super-rich should be taxed, though I think it should not be possible for Musk to become a trillionaire, and beyond a certain level of assets, there should be 100% taxation.
In part our notion of what is middle income has been skewed downward by the past two generations in which capital has stolen most of the increase in national income from the bottom 99%. First, a typical definition of the top of middle income would be double the median household income adjusted for household size. As of last year that was $183k for a 3 person household, so about $106k for 1 person or $236k for a family of 5. If you instead set the top of the middle class at 2x the median household income in 1970, and scale income with GDP per capita instead of inflation (i.e. distribute economic gains through wages as from 1946-1970 instead of allowing them to be concentrated as wealth), the top of the middle class would be at roughly $275k for an individual, $478k for a family of 3. The bottom of the middle class, i.e. the top edge of “poor” if held at the share of the pie for a household with 2/3rds median income in 1970, would be $91k for an individual in 2023. We have collectively been pushed out of the middle class and into lower income brackets by the collective action of the wealthy to concentrate income and assets in only a few hands over the past two generations. When we see folks making $400k as “them” rather than “us” we are mistaking the situation. They are just the luckiest of us, but all of us are and have been being slowly squeezed into serfdom by the folks making $400mil.
I make way less than your bottom of the middle class and always have, and I'd happily pay $1,500 more per year in taxes in exchange for universal no-cost healthcare. It's not about wealthier workers being "them"; it's about people being better able to pay some more for the common good, which is a collective responsibility.
The collective responsibility should include us seeing that you are paid better, not charging you for the failure of the elite to hold up their end of the stick. We need to tax the rich, but not just tax them, stop their theft from us: raise wages, save money on healthcare while making it universal, etc. The time for broad based taxes to meet societal needs is when income and wealth is broadly shared. For now, soak the rich.
If you want to create an economy in which there are full-time tenured positions for everyone with a Doctorate and all music gigs pay at least $100/hr, with benefits, go for it, but I can easily survive on my current income, as long as I have almost no medical expenses, though other expenses can be challenging and who knows what I'll make next year?
Forgive my presumption, but am I right in thinking you have a long ago rent controlled apartment cushioning the comfort level of your cash income? If you had to pay market rate for housing would you still characterize your income as you do? I think housing should be broadly cheaper than “market rates” in an artificial supply shortage, but I also think you, and most people, are underpaid.
Rent stabilized. That's correct. If I had to pay $3,000/month, I couldn't make it as a musician. The lack of sufficient housing, and particularly affordable housing, is a huge crisis in this country. That's another reason to tax people more according to their ability to pay: to launch a crash program of public housing nationwide. Providing people with more money doesn't solve a problem of scarcity.
benamery21, did I delete your reply by mistake by deleting a double post? If so, sorry. (I now see that that didn't happen.) But my reply to you is that I don't need to have a guaranteed income of $91K and don't think that only the super-rich should be taxed, though I think it should not be possible for Musk to become a trillionaire, and beyond a certain level of assets, there should be 100% taxation.