I'm not sure this is what upper middle, much less middle, class is.
A family that can pay several millions for houses abroad just to get a visa to change citizenship is way above middle class, or even upper middle class for that matter.
Pew Research defines middle class: $53,413 - $106,827 year, and upper-middle class: $106,827 - $373,894.
Maybe we’re sort of upper midde-class then. We gross about $200k consulting. Not rich, not poor.
We live in the developing world now so here we are definitely upper middle class/rich, and do not have millions in assets.
The middle class American dream is a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2 cars, and a dog.
You're talking about buying a half million dollar house in Spain because of a moral concern about global geopolitics. You're not middle class.
Not everywhere is the bay area, where you'll struggle to find this for under $1.5M. But $500k is not that much for a house these days in a lot of the markets where huge percentages of the population live (from the tri-state area, to Boston, to Seattle, LA, Austin, etc.) and lots of middle class people live in houses valued at more than this.
But yeah, when the median US household income is about $68k, early $200k a year puts you far outside the middle class, even if it doesn't feel that way. [ yes, cost of living in NYC or SF has some impact on this, but not much, given the median household income in those cities not actually being much above the national figure ]
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
[2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
Today I'm rich. Tomorrow I could be living in a van for 6 months like I did after the 2001 bubble burst.
I know plenty of people with upper class hobbies. I couldn't say for sure if they are rich, but they certainly don't live a lifestyle that I was ever familiar with growing up.
Even taking a year off to de-stress... Someone without financial means couldn't make those choices.
And I've known bipolar people too. They worked when they could, and went on disability when they couldn't. They were never rich. Even when they worked, they were always struggling.
I'd never met anyone taking about buying a house in the Spanish hills until becoming a techie.
I'm still not sure that's the differentiating factor here. OP made clear their moral objections, and sketched out part of a picture in which what makes this possible is not so much "typical tech money", but possibly "having owned a home in the US for long enough".
I have extremely non-tech but upper-middle class friends who in the past have discussed buying entire villages in Spain and Italy (they can be had for as little as $2-300k on the low end. These are not people who ever made "a lot of money", but they have owned homes for long enough that if they sold their house, they'd have capital to put into such a move.
My preference is actually Denmark, but it is an order of magnitude more difficult to move there, and my wife hates the language :(
It also reminds me of how mind-blowing it is that a country whose land-area is 1/5 of California managed to conquer almost 1/2 of South America!
Weird statement. Don't worry, I wouldn't take your uncertainty about your own feelings personally.
However, I do understand you, and this is something we've struggled with. My wife is a Turk, and at first when we realized "hey, if we sell my house in Mendocino, we can live like princes in Istanbul, or kings on the Aegean", and once that novelty wore off, we decided that we weren't those people.
The argument itself can apply to anywhere. In San Francisco, I spent 10 years living in illegal punk warehouses where I was not a gentrifier, but then I spent 10 years living in Oakland, where I was a gentrifier, even though I'm from California.
Where does the line get drawn? Is it OK to have the $$ to buy a nicer place anywhere in my own country? What about my home state?
We still struggle with this question a lot.
Now what if about 1/3 of that income came from my wife who is from a poorer country than Spain?
We almost bought a flat in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens! Politically/Energetically It’s what Berkeley was like in the early/mid-90s.
The day Trump was elected we were in Barcelona, and decided never to go back to the USA, flipped a coin between Spain and Greece. I always lose coin flips!
You know Bush isn't president anymore, right? That hasn't been a a popular (and I would say erroneous, even when it was popular) talking point for more than a decade.
I do find it interesting that expatriation trends seem to pivot in years with presidential elections, according to that chart.
The US performed military operations in eight different countries just during the Obama administration, some of the conflicts where not inherited, like the war in Syria and Yemen.
Those wars were payed by the US citizens regardless of whether they agreed with the war or not.
Creating a belt of failed states in Central Asia has been a long-standing policy, if Wesley Clark is to be believed. I can only speculate what the real goals are, but "because Jesus" or "because Bush is dumb" was always fodder for the low-info crowd who watched the Daily Show.
Citation needed.
When you're the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, your decisions outlast your position.
War and, I guess, the weather, are convenient narratives for these highly unpopular policies.
Would you like to? I ask in all seriousness. The UN has several programs which are basically refugee tourism.
Like missionary work but without forcing them to get baptized for their supper.
I did it in Turkey 6 years ago. Imagine 5 miles of tents in any direction. Most people who were there then are still there now.
If you oppose US wars and hegemony you should have followed Edward Snowden and moved to a country that actually oppose American influence in the world.
I really, really detest cold weather and drunk people, both of which Russia has in abundance. Russia and China are just as offensive to my own moral compass as the USA.
Once we attain citizenship I’m going to try to convince my family to move to Esbjerg, at least for a few years.
Ideally we would spend our winters somewhere warm and the rest of the time in Denmark.
Which doesn't mean much. NATO is not some alliance, it's the US calling the shots and others doing as told, or else (insert diplomatic, economic, etc. pressure).
We sold all of our US property last year; and now we are shopping for 4-6 unit buildings within 100km of Barcelona to get our Golden Visas. Our goal is to get citizenship and access to the EU then renouncing my US citizenship.
It isnt about money, I am juwt ashamed to have an American passport and know my tax dollars are being spent on war and murder in the name of christ and oil profits.
I was born an American and would prefer not to die that way.