That’s the classic definition of working class.
Having a roughly equal (in terms of importance) split between capital and labor dependence for income (such as by applying your labor to your own capital as an independent small-business owner or yeoman farmer) is the traditional middle class.
What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class?
Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.
Assuming you are completely dependent on the salary for support, you are high income working-class intelligentsia.
> What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class?
Assuming the returns from those investments are as important to your ability to get by (even if you aren’t touching them currently, but they ade backstopping your labor income), then you’ve achieved middle-class (petit bourgeios) status, instead of merely working class.
> Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.
“Skills to do labor that is valued by capitalists” are assets, sure, but they are the assets determining success within (and perhaps at the extremes the potential to move out of) the working class. Ownership of transferrable capital assets defines the difference between the working class and the higher classes in a capitalist economy.
I think middle class is about where your money comes from than the amount of your money. If you are primarily deriving your income from from working for a company you don’t control, then I think you are middle class.