No "ifs," "ands," or "buts." That's just bad financial planning. It's a totally unnecessary luxury that holds the potential to burden the entire family.
Additionally, your definition of "middle class" is quite peculiar. The median wage in the United States is less than $30k. The median household income is less than $60k. Do you really think "middle class" families are buying cars that cost as much as one of their salaries?
The narrative is that we are so well paid that we should be able to do that. But we obviously can't.
I'll concede that software engineers are overpaid and in such high demand when that is the case for the median case.
Just caught your edit. Middle class is relative to cost of living. Most of us work in cities where the CoL is much higher and so is the middle class income. It'd be better if we can both stick to comparing apples to apples and I think in this case sticking to cities is our best bet. SF median income is 100k [0]
[0] http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisco...
If "the narrative" indicates you "should" be able to spend that much, you need a new narrative. Ideally one that will not send you into penury.
I think this article is speaking out against this narrative that techies are incredibly well paid while in reality we mostly work in over priced cities with awful commutes and have a government and industry openly trying to suppress wages.
Any time one of us says "hey, we aren't that well paid" there is always someone to say we should move further away from work, or downsize, or skip having a family, or stick to rice and beans and it's getting old.