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Comment by beachstartup | Hacker News Reader

i'm not sure $125k/year for a family of 3 should really be considered 'upper class'. is 2 working parents barely making 60k each really upper class?

i would like to see these numbers for 4x or 5x the median (roughly $250k/year). to me that's really where the delta in income starts to become apparent as manifested in lifestyle choices and accumulated wealth.

edit: okay, reading the actual research reveals that pew calls it 'upper income', not 'upper class', which i generally agree more with. this is probably a slight editorial twist by nytimes to emphasize the point.

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Agreed. We live in Canada. Our household income for a family of 3 is just over $125K and I certainly don't feel like we're "upper class". We can't even afford to buy a house where we live.

I live in a town in the US where the median household income is roughly $36k and the median household size is 3.9. Most adults own their home here.

I know most HN people tend to see urban/suburban areas as the only habitable zones, but come on - you are definitely living high on the hog, it's just hard to see because you choose a location and lifestyle with very high expenses.

That's true, but what do you do for a living? I think it'd be significantly harder to find a job as a developer in the middle of nowhere, it's even hard to find an interesting job in the suburbs IME.

I'm a 60% developer / 40% small team lead. Do it all remotely with trips to California every two months or so.

Plenty of positions are available for remote workers. From what I've seen, it's not the employers, but rather the employees. For some reason, the convenience and distractions of cities are lifestyle requirements, not employment requirements. Which is fine, but I take issue with the widespread delusion that lifestyle expenses are not a choice, especially for cognitive workers like developers, designers, etc.

Well, I live about a 45 minute drive from Vancouver BC. It's still part of the "Greater Vancouver" area, but it's not like we're living right downtown. The area I live is pretty much all residential. We're not exactly living a fast paced fancy high life. Yes, living here is a choice we make. I could move to the middle of nowhere , buy a house, and have lower expenses. Heck, I could move to a third world country and live like a king for a fraction of what I pay now. But I don't think that's really relevant. My wife and I's families are both close by, our 9 year old daughter has grown up here and has many friends. For a single individual, or a small family without many connections to where they live, it's easier to just up and move on. However, it isn't always as easy as it sounds.

Curious what part of BC you are in? My wife and I had dreams to move to Vancouver one day but seems impossible given that we just had a baby, and housing prices. We looked at Surry but seems a bit gritty and at the border of affordability. We're sick of Toronto. The traffic, the cost of houses and the weather all suck (TO has fantastic ethnic diversity and all our family lives there). We have friends buying run-down semidetached houses for a million dollars in Toronto ... we're saying no to that.

Real close to Surrey actually, a few blocks from the border. Anywhere in the Lower Mainland is a really beautiful place to live, and lots to do outdoors if you're into that. Surrey had a bad reputation but it's mostly deserved. As usual, the vast majority of people are totally normal citizens, but there's plenty of gang violence. Last I read there had been 36 gang shootings in 2016 alone (Here's a map: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/2016-surrey-shootings). It's not somewhere I would ever want to live personally, but I know many people who have spent their whole lives there without any incidence.

If you're trying to escape expensive house prices though, you're looking in the wrong place. Housing prices have been on the rise for years now. I love the weather here, but you have to be prepared for lots of rain and grey winters. Traffic can be pretty terrible too depending on where you're going and when. Because of the geography of the area, there's lots of bridges that people like to get in accidents on during rush hour. If you can avoid having to cross a bridge in rush hour, or drive in the downtown core, you'll be fine.

FWIW I grew up in Victoria, spent a year in TO, and have been in the lower mainland for the last 5 years and it's been my favourite place to live by far.

My wife spent 10 years in Surrey before moving in with me. We are thinking of moving to Canada, currently living in Bay Area, myself a developer for last 5+ years, earning decently but just tired of the Silicon-Valley rat race (commute, real-estate ownership and long term family settlement) and the weird systems here (immigration [being affected] + general political sentiment[long term, not currently affected]), and not able to decide whether to go to Vancouver or TO or any other option? Most likely, I will be working remotely for the same company and making trips every month or two when I move. Do you mind if you share any advice you might have? Thanks!

Both can be great cities and have different things to offer. I would try to visit both and see which one you enjoy more. TO is like a racial mixing pot, you get people from all over the world, so it has a pretty unique culture, but it's a pretty big city. Not a lot of outdoors, I didn't find people to be the friendliest. If you like living in a big city it might be worth it.

Vancouver is big, but more spread out. The downtown core isn't huge. It's in the Fraser Valley so it's beautiful pretty much no matter were you are. You have these bit mountains in the north and east. Not quite as multicultural, it's predominantly white/Asian(/Indian). I live in Delta which is a 35 minute drive from downtown with no traffic or closer to an hour wirh traffic. There is lots to do, especially if you like the outdoors.

Weather is pretty drastically different. TO has hot hot summers and cold cold winters. Expect a bit of snow but mostly it's just freaking cold. However, it's typically still nice sunny blue skies in the winter. Vancouvers winters are much more mild; we didn't get any snow last year where I live. It will get close to 0, but we play outdoor soccer year round so it's certainly bearable. Winters can feel long when it's just grey skies and rain though; part of living in a valley. Summer's are beautiful, hot and humid. Luckily there's no shortage is beaches and lakes to go cool down in.

Looking for anything in specific or does that help?

That's very good info, thanks a lot!!!. I am also thinking in terms of my wife's career because she has an economics degree and which city would be better for children to grow up in because we will be starting a family as well. I really appreciate the advice you gave. So do you go watch whitecaps games?

Are you guys Canadian citizens? If not, be aware the PR process is really slow (probably slower if you have to do a spousal sponsorship). The tax treaty between US and Canada makes the prospect of working in the US not that bad ... you need a good/expensive accountant to help you sort through the various complexities. Air Canada will make you suffer if you have to fly back for business meetings. If there is any way to avoid remote work, I'd suggest you take it. We had to do this for various reasons and it led to a lot of personal sacrifices and suffering.

In addition, I think Bay area real-estate is a far better deal than TO or YYZ real-estate. The key reason is that you can get a 20-30 year fixed mortgage in the US while you will you only get a 5 year in Canada. The -average- detached house in Toronto is 1.2 million bucks. Absolutely out of whack with incomes. In the Bay area, prices are high but so are incomes.

My wife is citizen, and I still have a year and a half left on my H1, so can continue to work from Canada I think till I get my PR and then the switch can happen. The meetings are more or less Webex/Google Hangout like stuff, I don't expect to fly for frequent business meetings but more for being in sync with HQ.

I agree Bay area real-estate is better and so are the incomes high, but I think I will save on child-care and stuff as both me & my wife's parents can baby-sit and even though how much I like to live in Bay Area, the current immigration system is making me cringe as neither her nor my parents can stay here for more than 6 months, whereas the super-visa in Canada can help us start our family more easily.

I guess that's true, I'm just a fancyite. Gotta have that sushi delivered to me, etc

Sure they could reduce expenses by moving but they would also see a drop in income too. You can't compare a SF dollar with an Appleton Wi dollar. They aren't the same

It may be worth pointing out that as of right now, CAD $125K is only USD $96.5K, while USD $125K is CAD $162K. There are probably a number of other factors offsetting the exchange rate, but with a family income of >$150K in Canada you're at least pretty well off and in a high percentile, house or not.

i think it's pretty typical for people to appraise their own relative income level lower than it actually is.

Housing is a good equalizer. The average detached home in Toronto is 1.2 million dollars. The middle class should be able to afford a home, I think. Therefore, the parent is correct in his/her observation. The inflation numbers we have are grossly inaccurate. If we take the price of housing into account as we adjust incomes, the cut off for the middle class is probably 250-300K.

i disagree that the middle class should be able to afford to buy a home, necessarily. that's completely dependent on the housing market in their area. is there a crisis of homeless middle class people? if not, then they aren't being priced out of a place to live, but out of owning a house. i've never considered the middle class as excluding renters.

IMHO, we're in exceptional times. Taxes are generally based on income but property rents are a function of property prices. I've had a bunch of Uber drivers claim they are struggling to make ends meet in the Bay area - yet they have houses worth over a million bucks. Income-wise, these people are blue-color workers but have insane assets simply because they were in the right place at the right time (good for them!). Meanwhile, I know physicians moving out of places like the Bay and NYC because they cannot afford the rent. Things are messed up and no one at the helm seems to care.

We should re-evaluate the class distinctions. Where does upper class start? Upper class to me should feel like upper class. It needs to be as you suggested at 4x or 5x the median income for the area.

I think upper class is the ability to afford, without undue stress, an ample house and two car payments while still going to get manicures.

That's a pretty vague definition.

Houses, cars and even food expenditures can easily vary by a factor of 3-4 even within a relatively small area based on individual preferences and habits.

What is an "ample" house?

Define your terms.

I don't think the specific number matters too much. As long as the number was consistent in the survey, the point is made.

i think it matters a lot. every few thousand you move that line in either direction is going to make a large direct impact on the apparent 'growth' or 'decline' on either side of it.

The only number that actually matters here is "median household income". The distance away on both sides doesn't matter, because the article is analyzing movement away from the center.

Does it matter if you're capturing the middle 20% or the middle 60% of the country? Not really. There are fewer people in the "middle", for some definition of middle.

> Does it matter if you're capturing the middle 20% or the middle 60% of the country? Not really.

Its actually capturing a multiplier below and above the median. If it was capturing a fixed percentage in the middle, then the share in the "middle class" could not change over time...

Lol, good point. But you'd be able to see the income spread of the middle class.

Its the spread that matters, and holding the income multiplier steady and then looking at %...

Or holding the % steady (then looking at the income numbers)...

That doesn't matter. Really. They all measure the spread away from the median over time.

If you live in San Jose - no.

If you live in Modesto - yes.

While the NYT article omits this in the description of what the numbers are based on, the source it is drawn from (and which is linked in the article) indicates that the per-metro figures are computed after adjusting for metro-area cost of living. Which should correct somewhat for inter-region variations, but also makes the definition of "middle class" very weird, even as income-based definitions of "class" go.

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