“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.
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.