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Poll: What percentage of Americans Can Be Middle Class? (1 Viewer)

What percentage of Americans have the opportunity to be middle class?


  • Total voters
    64

TripItUp

Footballguy
A quick google search defines the middle class as the following:

"Pew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income.This means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000. "

 
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Here's a Pew calculator if you want to play around with household size and metropolitan area.  Trip's range of $40,500 and $122,000 is too large to be meaningful by itself, in my opinion.

@TripItUp  Define "have the opportunity" please.

I also assume you are referring to children and young adults becoming middle class.  A poor, disabled elderly man, in contrast, has very little opportunity to improve his circumstances.

 
@TripItUp  Define "have the opportunity" please.

I also assume you are referring to children and young adults becoming middle class.  A poor, disabled elderly man, in contrast, has very little opportunity to improve his circumstances.


Yes, I'm referring to young persons becoming middle class.   What percentage of them actually have the opportunity to become middle class?

 
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I think everyone.

Ill get slapped for that, I acknowledge the challenges some face, but also any given person out of that challenged group can emerge. I don’t think this can be done linearly, you need an x/y axis. People rising X (f) of force against them X (f) time.

 
Everyone has the chance but can everyone actually do it at the same time or is the room limited? I don’t know

 
I selected >90% even though the "opportunity" is a hard road for too many.

I'm also answered the question right before the poll.  Not the question that is in the title.

 
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A quick google search defines the middle class as the following:

"Pew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income.This means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000. "
Too many variables really for me to judge. Chicago 40k and 2 kids isn’t middle class. That’s just so wide a margin.

 
I think everyone.

Ill get slapped for that, I acknowledge the challenges some face, but also any given person out of that challenged group can emerge. I don’t think this can be done linearly, you need an x/y axis. People rising X (f) of force against them X (f) time.
Not everyone, come on. That’s just absurd.

 
Also do you realize how horrible you sound saying some people need to choose between being poor or not having kids? That IMO is very anti- human nature and borderline dystopian. 

 
Also do you realize how horrible you sound saying some people need to choose between being poor or not having kids? That IMO is very anti- human nature and borderline dystopian. 
We'll agree to disagree on your conclusion.  There are most certainly a lot of people having kids that shouldn't.

 
A quick google search defines the middle class as the following:

"Pew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income.This means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000. "
This seems like a very large range. I would put it at 25% below and above the median. 

 
Everyone can easily reach middle class or higher.  The problem is some people are to lazy to try or don’t want to put in the effort to reach middle class, with unemployment the lowest sine 1969, lots of jobs and opportunities for those who try.

 
Who gets to decide that? 
everybody gets to decide, they should just make those decisions with the understanding it's going to impact their qualify of life (lower class. vs. middle class etc.)

I have very little empathy for those deciding to have kids that didn't have the fiscal means to do so.  Life is a series of decisions, make good ones or live with the repercussions of making bad ones.  :shrug:

 
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Everyone can easily reach middle class or higher.  The problem is some people are to lazy to try or don’t want to put in the effort to reach middle class, with unemployment the lowest sine 1969, lots of jobs and opportunities for those who try.
yet here we are with a poll where 66% of voters believe the number is less than 80%.  Astonishing really.

 
yet here we are with a poll where 66% of voters believe the number is less than 80%.  Astonishing really.
So for this a person would have to be making about $19.50/hour minimum to get into the middle class.  You guys really think that laziness is the only reason that 100% couldn't be able to get to this level?

 
I voted >90%

Middle class to me is above poverty and up to $1M in income

 
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everybody gets to decide, they should just make those decisions with the understanding it's going to impact their qualify of life (lower class. vs. middle class etc.)

I have very little empathy for those deciding to have kids that didn't have the fiscal means to do so.  Life is a series of decisions, make good ones or live with the repercussions of making bad ones.  :shrug:
Sometimes good decisions go bad as well.  You can't predict illnesses, accidents, etc.   Sounds like you were lucky enough to avoid some of those things.  

 
Middle class is 40k to 122K?

wow.  It’s like the def of a gen x’er (1976 to 2000, or whatever it is).  

If that is the definition I’d say it has no purchase.  Someone making 30k has a lot more in common with someone making 40k than someone who makes 90k.  Never mind a 122k.  

 
I have the opportunity to become a billionaire or even the first human on Mars, but the odds are slim.

The better question is about probability of children becoming middle class.

And that probability is most closely tied to the economic status of their parents. This isn't true everywhere.

 
Opportunity, I'd say 90%+

Join the military. Get an education.  Someone can easily fall in the 40K+ range by 25 years old. 

 
I think a large percentage have the opportunity but I don't know how many realistically can be there.  I don't agree that middle class is $40K - $122K.  Where you live matters on what that middle class range should be too.

 
So for this a person would have to be making about $19.50/hour minimum to get into the middle class.  You guys really think that laziness is the only reason that 100% couldn't be able to get to this level?
Obviously there are mental and physical disabilities, issues etc.  so the number isn’t 100%

 
The flaw is not caring, TripItUp. Not about delivering care, the whether & how of which is arguable. It is that you don't care and appear to term yourself a citizen. I've followed your posts long enough to know you're a thoughtful person and you certainly have the same right not to care as anyone. But this country was built by communities, not individuals. The great extent of frontiers & resources and how little fettered was innovation set us apart from the rest of the world's nations, but America was built town by town, with care for any & all who shared in the Grand Experiment.

Channel flipping between ballgames last nite i came upon the revisionist western Silverado. Remember how the four heroes came upon a hijacked wagon train and jumped into action, risking life & limb without incentive greater than Rosanna Arquette nor second thought? That's America. You're walking west and there's a guy mopping his brow from digging postholes by his lonesome, you spend the afternoon, day, week, rest of your life diggin' postholes with that guy because that's how the frontier is tamed. Chippin' in.

You've had this selfishness marketed to you and you've bought it. Yes, there are hordes of filthy beasts who don't care and are beneath your consideration, but everyone from the odd child of trailer junkies who don't want it to be like this, to hordes fleeing subsistence living to the south, to the person who just realized that the old ways which kept his family sound for generations have passed him by & ain't coming back and wants to give up or get reeeeal mad got the right to do what they're doing and if you see it, it's on you to chip in if you can. The question shouldn't be who you get to determine is filth or not, but who you gonna help. If you are to call yourself a citizen, you are not here to prove anything. You're here to provide everything you can. Otherwise, your life has no value but to you. Go in peace.

 
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Everyone can easily reach middle class or higher.  The problem is some people are to lazy to try or don’t want to put in the effort to reach middle class, with unemployment the lowest sine 1969, lots of jobs and opportunities for those who try.
The number of people that fit this is growing.

 
Voted >90%.  Hard work can get any one individual to the 40k level.  Not sure what that proves or disproves but seems undeniable to me based on the question.

 
I think anyone can reach middle class, but not everyone can. 

In any case the question is almost irrelevant, because as the number of middle class people increase, their spending power decreases, so that eventually you end up with roughly the same number of middle class people as you had before. 

 
The flaw is not caring, TripItUp. Not about delivering care, the whether & how of which is arguable. It is that you don't care and appear to term yourself a citizen. I've followed your posts long enough to know you're a thoughtful person and you certainly have the same right not to care as anyone. But this country was built by communities, not individuals. The great extent of frontiers & resources and how little fettered was innovation set us apart from the rest of the world's nations, but America was built town by town, with care for any & all who shared in the Grand Experiment. Channel flipping between ballgames last nite i came upon the revisionist western Silverado. Remember how the four heroes came upon a hijacked wagon train and jumped into action, risking life & limb without incentive greater than Rosanna Arquette nor second thought. That's America. You're walking west and there's a guy mopping his brow from digging postholes by his lonesome, you spend the afternoon, day, week, rest of your life diggin' postholes with that guy because that's how the frontier is tamed. Chippin' in.

You've had this selfishness marketed to you and you've bought it. Yes, there are hordes of filthy beasts who don't care and are beneath your consideration, but everyone from the odd child of trailer junkies who don't want it to be like this, to hordes fleeing subsistence living to the south, to the person who just realized that the old ways which kept his family sound for generations have passed him by & ain't coming back got the right to do what they're doing and if you see it you should help. The question shouldn't be who you get to determine is filth or not, but who you gonna help. If you are to call yourself a citizen, you are not here to prove anything. You're here to provide everything you can. Otherwise, your life has no value but to you. Go in peace.
This guy gets it.

 

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