I remember the old definition of "Middle". You know, like the 50 yard line in football. [View all]

[Tom Rinaldo]

Mid field has as much turf extending to the right as it does to the left. And when a team runs a fullback up the middle he plows into the center of the opposing line. Middle still means middle in football, but obviously not in American politics. Families earning $250,000 or more per year fall into the top 2% of income earners in America today, yet many talking heads insist (with strong Republican and some Democratic backing) that income level still falls within "the Middle Class". WTF? Since when does sitting on the two yard line place you in the middle of the field?

I hear the arguments that emanate from a privileged bubble. It’s true that a really nice home costs a lot more in some areas than in others. So do really nice restaurants. Areas that are desirable to live in for one reason or another often have higher costs than less desirable areas, all of this is true. So? The vast majority of Americans are priced out of living in nice homes in those areas; that is a fact of life. Have we gotten to the point where being wealthy in America is defined as the ability to write unlimited blank checks, and everyone who can’t gets called “Middle Class”?

Watching TV earlier today I was told about the challenges facing a “Middle Class” family earning $250,000 annually while living in a nice neighborhood in an expensive city with two kids in college each costing them $30,000 a year in tuition. The message, I assume, was that “these people are not rich.” Maybe yes and maybe no; rich to an extent is a subjective marker. Here is what is not subjective though. They still earn more than 98% of American families. If they can’t easily afford everything they want, what about the rest of us? There are parents working full time in the exact same expensive cities, in jobs paying at or near the minimum wage. How many families in America have kids who can’t afford to go to college at all, not even to public universities, without first being burdened with a life time of college loan debts?

Really, what is the point of language anyway when we gladly make a mockery of a words obvious meaning? The top 2% equals the 98th percentile. Perform that well in school and an A+ grade is assured, even if two people in a hundred might score a fraction higher. Yet when it comes to personal incomes middle essentially is being defined as less than a rarified maximum. That’s like saying that the Rockies can’t be mountains because the Himalayas are higher.

And here’s the thing. Even under Obama’s initial proposal everyone gets a tax cut on the first quarter million they make each year. If 98% of us really fall into the “Middle Class”, we all will keep our tax cut on that “middle class” income. That means for anyone out there having to scrape by on just $285,000 a year, Uncle Sam would only get another small nibble on $35,000 of that total figure. The total average annual income for seniors on Social Security is barely over a third of that. Yet Social Security may remain at risk for budget cuts next year, while we worry about the fortunes of families only making $300,000 a year, because we can’t ask them for more sacrifices; they are the “Middle Class”.