Minimum wage is ~$15k nationally. Also - IIUC - West Hollywood, CA voted for the highest minimum wage in the country, and it's lower than $40k. Where is minimum wage $40k??

Anyway - there's a lot of minimum wage workers who make below $40k - probably the majority make less than half that - many minimum wage workers do not work full-time.

And, yes, considering how many single-parent HHs there are, and how many HHs with only 1 person on a small SS check - two working adults making minimum wage would be considered close to low end for middle class.

Median HH income is $67k - meaning only 50% of HH make more than that. So the bar for middle class is obviously going to be lower than that. It's subjective - maybe your bar is at $50k? The tax rate is still quite low at that point (~14% with ~7% of that being your pension - SS & Medicare - even lower if this is a family instead of a single person - which, statistically, is likely).

If this is considered hammered - I don't know how low people expect taxes should be, yet we still have a functioning society.

And, regardless, you're getting significantly more hammered the more income you make until you're deep into the 1% and can afford to avoid taxes. The top 10% are not skimping out on taxes. People making >$5M are.

I don't know that I've ever thought about my bar, but when I was a kid my dad was making around 80-90k and we considered ourselves low-solid middle class. But that was 30-40 years ago, my understanding is that real wages have not kept up with inflation so I'd expect the bars on middle class to be higher today.

Of course we also had the idea that "middle class" was more of an aspirational lifestyle goal and not a moving target. I guess if we just define it accurately as the median of real incomes we can see this range drop alarmingly. Thanks for the perspective.

So, a few reference points. In 1980: the median household income was $17.7k. The median income for one individual was $12k. $80k in 1980 is roughly equivalent to $240,000 in 2020.

That was top-end middle class, absolute minimum.

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1982/demographi...

$240,000 in Bay Area California is immensely different than $240,000 in the hills of West Virginia. Middle class is more of a lifestyle than a particular income number. It is entirely possible that middle class in a particular city includes people whose incomes are in the top 5% nationally, but still live barely comfortably because their high cost-of-living area.

I'd argue median income is irrelevant when it comes to assessing whether or not someone is living a middle class lifestyle.

This has some merit currently - but far less so in the past.

NYC and The Bay area have always been expensive. But the difference 40-years ago was nowhere near as drastic as it is today.

That would've been top 4% in income then.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. 40 hours for 50 weeks makes for $14,500 annually (before taxes). Around 21 states use this value as their minimum wage.

The largest state minimum wage can be found in New York and Washington, DC, at $15. That is $30,000 annually.