Owning a home, having significant savings, holidays abroad at least once a year, sending your children to private school, etc are probably some things I'd consider markers of being in the lower middle class.
On that basis, homes are becoming harder to own, savings are being eaten up by higher cost of living, the pound is weakening and taxes are making it untenable to send your children to private school.
Maybe my idea of what being middle class is is wrong, but it can't be far off, and that's exactly the group of people who aren't going to go much further beyond that to whatever comes at the next stage, I don't know what living standards look like for people above that; multiple properties, significant portfolios, not working for a living?
If my perspective if off, I'm willing to hear it.
But it’s not obvious that the standard of living associated with being better off would ever have been near the 90th, let alone 90th percentile of salaries?
Not convinced that sending children to private school would ever have been seen as a ‘lower middle class’ expectation.
But I’m also not convinced that the markers you describe are not available to someone at the 75th percentile of income, say, let alone to people at the 95th percentile. Now the luxuriousness of those markers may not be at the level marketed in glossy brochures etc but isn’t that an issue with unrealistic expectations?
You come across as out of touch and entitled. You live in the future - enjoy it!
I suspect it's nowhere near the 95th percentile of earned wealth.
If the income of everybody above the 80th percentile dropped to be equal to the 81st percentile, the 80th percentile income wouldn't change the ones above would just be very closely bunched.
(Last time I checked the opposite was true and they got more spread out)