Reply #16: I think you are missing out on some major points

[eg101]

First, I have not looked at the tables you provided, but I certainly will later.

I have been following this issue for some time, and yes, you are correct: most think everyone else is rich, but them.

Your household figures are somewhat misleading. THe median household size is probably 2.X people. That means that a certain percentage of those census responders are counting 2 or even 3 incomes.

I have seen other figures from the IRS (sorry no links right now, but I have seen them posted previously here on DU), that indicate that for all tax returns in a recent year, half of those returns were under $35 adjusted gross income. And 1/3 of all tax returns were under $20K. This includes both single and joint filers.

But the real question is: how much are those real incomes (unadjusted gross) and what percent of those returns are joint?

If we knew those figures, we could get a rough estimate of what the percentiles for gross income in this country, e.g., what is the 25%tile, 33%tile, 50%tile, etc, numbers for gross income.

Isn't interesting that the media always seems to give the impression that most people are making big bucks, which always seems to imply that if you are not making big bucks, well, then that is just you....