First, they said "when things were great". Considering they stated that ownership as past tense, I would assume things didn't stay great, and just because you make $1000 a week sometimes doesn't mean you make anywhere near that consistently.

Secondly, it's much more important to look at local median income and local cost of living. $1000 a week in many areas won't get you far if most of it is taken up by taxes and housing. And before someone pulls out the "well, move to somewhere cheaper", there's no guarantee that a cheaper to live location would necessarily still support $1000/week to the owner, or if there was a commute, that it wouldn't eat significantly into that income (fuel + toll + car payment which may not be required if you live locally could be well over a $1000/month).

If wikipedia is any indication, the definition of middle class is nebulous.

My hunch is most people don't base it on dividing the population in to equal fractions, which is kind of how I read your comments.

I think your hunch is right, but economists' definitions do tend to be tied to numbers. Pew Research and others -- although I doubt this is a universal definition—usually treat "middle class" as being two-thirds to double the median income in an area. That seems like an unusually high range -- I would have assumed two-thirds to four-thirds would make more sense, but I suspect it's to account for how sharply incomes rise at the high end of the scale (e.g., the median salary in the top quintile compared to that of the middle quintile is many times greater than the median salary in the middle quintile is compared to the lowest).

Even with that there's an awful lot of caveats, though; as folks have noted, regional differences can be huge. The median income in Silicon Valley as of last year is just under $100K (despite the picture that Hacker News can sometimes paint!), but in Tampa Bay, Florida, it was just under $60K.

Depends on the area. The national median doesn't really give you insight into whether someone is middle class or not.

I'd also point out it's 15% higher than the median. How small do you feel the middle class is? You mentioned "lower middle class"; I only see them mention "middle class".

But even for the lower middle class, it rather depends on how you choose to count it, no? I've seen some economists define middle class as the middle 60%. Given that range (~$46k - $140k), they're in the lower end, if you want to hold them to that statement (that they never made).

I never said "lower middle class". From this article [0], ~$50k doesn't seem like a stretch for middle class.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-income-us-city-...

It is in SFO.