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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

100k is close to middle class for someone with a family at this point. Homer Simpson makes six figures, Mr. Burns mortgage is six figures. Something like quarter million would've landed better I suspect. This is the sort of thing people in stuffy boardrooms come up with as opposed to a advertising team, lacking polish.

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In the Bay, Seattle, or NY, maybe. In Bessemer, AL where the vote is being held, the median family income is $40k.

Still a ridiculous talking point.

Bessemer's middle class are poor in national terms, they are aware of other areas in the country and likely don't limit themselves to their zip code when making comparisons.

Median Value of owner occupied housing units:

National[0] - $217,500

Bessemer, AL[1] - $86,500

Median household income:

National - $62,843

Bessemer, AL - $32,301

[0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

[1]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/bessemercityalabama

Warehouse employees in Bessemer are not making $40k. More like $20k with minimal benefits if they're lucky. Keep in mind that's before a couple grand in income and sales taxes.

> 100k is close to middle class

If a large minority of it is derived from capital directly or the majority of it is derived from the worker’s labor applied to their own capital.

If it is derived from wage labor and is the worker’s entire income, its just relatively high-income working class, and isn’t “close to” middle class.

Agreed. There is a truly bizarre tendency for people to try to reinvent class based on income, realize it doesn't work very well, add some sort of interest or social dimension to it, and slowly reinvent the classical concept of class with the labels shuffled around. We've already had good class labels, working class, labor aristocracy, middle class, struggling capitalist class (small business owners ie petite bourgeoisie), and major capitalist.

I think it should be some kind of law of the internet. Any discussion of socioeconomic topics ends up reinventing the classic class system on a long enough time scale.

That may be true in SV or something like that, but I am guessing in Alabama, for someone making $15-$20 an hour six figures seems like quite a bit. Heck I'd consider myself upper middle class and I make low six figures.

Even in SV someone working at an Amazon warehouse is not making more than that.

According to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AL, the median income is $50k so it's good but hardly lavish and https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Alabama/Mobile/Household-... has the 80th percentile just under $100k whereas 95th percentile is $154k.

I think it's easy to forget just how uneven things have become since the middle of the previous century: someone making more money than 95 out of every 100 Alabama residents is doing quite well compared to most of the people in the state and is still nowhere near CEO-level compensation.

Household income.

You're right about the data the parent is quoting, however it's worth pointing out that the national median income for a full-time (35+ hours per week) job in the US is over $50,000 (excluding benefits and other forms of compensation).

Thanks for pointing that out but I don't think it dramatically changes the broader point: if you're making $40-50k/year, someone making $100k is making a good deal more than you but their life isn't dramatically different — bigger house, nicer car, etc. but they still have to go work every day, don't have servants, etc. and they're still going to pay attention to the cost of things like daycare or college or fear the financial impact of a medical bill.

No question that it's better but it's going from average to “highest income person you know who isn't your doctor” rather than executive class income.

Anywhere on the western half of the US requires $100k+ to have a place to live that isn't a studio apartment or having roommates

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