(ok, so not "all", but there's a lot of "rule for thee but not for me")
It’s not middle income, but, insofar as income correlates with economic class, its quite consistent (if, as here, it is labor income) with middle class (petit bourgeois), since the worker with that income likely has substantial capital investment and income (or at least accumulation if they aren’t realizing income), but is not independent of renting their labor or applying it to that capital for support.
Middle income isn’t middle class, and people at that income level are generally firmly in the working class.
It's not $300K, it's $243K household income in San Francisco and $252K household income in San Jose in your own link and that's the upper bound of some arbitrary "study". Please don't spread misinformation as it makes this site look poorly educated.
Someone having a perspective, which is based on data, that you disagree with does not qualify as misinformation. I lived in the aforementioned cities and am not in a relationship with someone who is a high income earner. I think it's fine to point out how problematic it is that whether it's 250, 300, or 400k being the bar for middle class is pretty far down the line of problematicness.
An individual making $400K is rarer than a household making $400K so if the upper bound for a household is $250K, the individual upper bound is far lower, which is nowhere near $400K.
The claim that someone that makes even $300K is “middle class” anywhere is hilarious. That person becomes a millionaire in their 20s while living a very cushy life. You’re incredibly out of touch.
I had a similar income and similar rent on average and was already a millionaire before I turned 28 only investing in index funds. This includes paying off $60K in student loans. Good luck doing that on $65K/year in Ohio.
Newark or Fremont is within 30 minutes drive (usually within 40 for rush hour) and there's tons at that price point. On the Google side of the bay there's many around $5k.
And honestly, as pointed out, an extra $10-20k on housing doesn't really change the point anyway.
“I suppose, that’s probably what you need to have a middle-class lifestyle up there too”
The point I’m making is that the median middle class income, $70k/year, doesn’t work - which is in agreement with him - pay attention.
“I suppose, that’s [$400k] probably what you need to have a middle-class lifestyle up there [around Mountain View] too”
I showed this to be false. You will be plenty middle class at even 2/5 of that income, $150k, with still $44k disposable income.
It's irrelevant equating your purported housing cost (which was also shown to be false), $70k, is the median middle class income.
This whole thread is about, "you have to make sooo much money to be middle class", and we can debate the merits of that being a certain reasonable X% above median, like maybe each individual making $90k, or a single earner household of $130k. But it makes no sense to talk about what makes someone middle class around Mountain View to inject, "well my overestimate of a local housing cost is equal to median income elsewhere."
What does make sense, is if someone says it takes generating $200k-220k in disposable income to be middle class, to refute that argument by pointing out that income is so beyond the typical middle class American, because they are making 3x the money of a middle class American, if that middle class American had 0 taxes or housing costs, further illustrating how absurd that is.
End of story.
Also, news to me since I'm in a $4.2k/mth rental, and feel free to view all the <= $4k 4-bed within commuting distance:
https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/?searchQueryState=%7B%...
Big tech has lots of real estate for their mega campuses. It is gonna take a while to unwind that.
This seems to be just extending the problem.