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Comment by balderdash | Hacker News Reader

the thing that doesn't compute for me is that the definition of upper middle class here is 5-15x the federal poverty line, ok, but in 1970 the federal poverty line was like ~$3k (and ~$22k today) 10x in 1970 (~33k/year) in nyc you could buy a 2,000 sqft apt for like 2.75x your salary [1] today, that same apartment is like >10x - so while perhaps more people are earning "upper middle class" incomes, what that gets you has declined significantly.

[1]https://www.elikarealestate.com/blog/tracing-buying-real-est...

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The poverty line, as established in the 60s, is simply 3x the minimum food budget. Food as a percentage of spending has decreased, while housing and other expenses have dramatically increased.

If the poverty line were to be adjusted to reflect the share that food takes up of income today, from ~30% in 1963 to ~6% today, the threshold for a family of four would go from ~30k a year to ~150k.

More in-depth explanation here: https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie

that's really interesting thanks.

That article is BS, the author even acknowledges that in a later post.

The main reason the share went from 30% to 6% is because people are richer. Poor people spend more money on food than rich people.

It's true that lower income families spend a higher proportion of money on food [0], but that was equally true in 1963. It's a static fact about income brackets at any time, and doesn't explain the change in average share.

Food share dropped from ~30% to ~6% because real incomes have risen and food has become cheaper relative to housing, healthcare, education, and so on. That shift affects all income levels, including the poor. Your point doesn't contradict the article's, that the poverty line, based on 1960s food budgets, no longer reflect current costs of living.

Could you send the article where the author revises their claim?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel%27s_law

In the 1950's poor people in America may have had housing, but there's a good chance that housing didn't have plumbing. Poor people in the 50's spent roughly 0% of their income on childcare. Much of the article is complaining about the cost of child care.

You may think that poor people should be able to afford child care. That's a valid thought. But then you can't compare that to a 1950's definition of poverty where child care is definitely not affordable by the poor.

In the 60s (and 50s, though not sure why we're moving backwards) most households were single income; childcare costs were virtually nonexistent because mothers typically stayed at home to raise children, and a family would get by on the father's income alone.

That actually illustrates the point nicely: typical economic and living situations from when the metric was created were very different from today in a variety of ways, and once again, the reason the 3x food costs number was chosen -- that roughly 1/3 of income of low-income households was spent on food -- is simply no longer true.

Now, what the poverty line should be is a whole 'nother topic -- for the record the ~150k number is more as an demonstration of how broken the metric is than an actual suggestion, at least as I see it. This discussion doesn't seem to be going anywhere though so I'm tapping out, but I would still appreciate it if you would link to the article you mentioned.

That sounds specifically like the housing shortage that is afflicting some of the most dynamic, productive parts of the country, like NYC and the California Bay Area.

Driven by NIMBYism and some other things, those areas stopped building anything like enough housing, with the obvious result that demand outstripped supply and prices rose, putting them out of reach of many.

That's kind of the origin story of the YIMBY movement, which started forming to fight that trend.

I don't disagree but i also think in terms of actual numbers, the majority of the people that earn these upper middle income salaries are living in more expensive urban areas (at least before work from home)

> in 1970 (~33k/year) in nyc

Comparing NYC in the 1970s to today isn't a "big apple to big apple" comparison.

NYC in 1970s was on the verge of bankruptcy [0] and federal receivership, saw 1,000 industrial firms leave annually leading to 500K jobs lost from 1969-76 [1], and saw around 880K residents [2] leave for suburbs or other states. NYC didn't recover until the 2000s [3].

For your discussion, a better comparison should be cities+towns that were rich in the 1970s that remained rich in the 2020s, and cities+towns that were poor in the 1970s and remained poor in the 2020s. Similarly, a better contemporary comparison for NYC in the 1970s would be Detroit or potentially even Los Angeles.

[0] - https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

[1] - https://www.polyarchives.hosting.nyu.edu/exhibits/show/strug...

[2] - https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/blackou...

[3] - https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/local-government/publications/p...

yeah that was a pretty cheap time to buy in nyc for sure - but i don't think that anyone would argue that the the ratio of home price/income has stayed flat/decreased over the past five decades

I remember 1970.

Few people had air conditioning. Cars might last 100,000 miles, if you got a good one. They performed poorly, got awful mileage, and crushed the passenger compartment if you got into an accident.

Many people smoked, and people died younger. Medicine wasn’t as good.

Rich kids might have a giant set of books called an ‘encyclopedia’. It was about the only way to learn things that were outside your circle, there was no internet.

TV came in 3 channels, and you had to be sitting in front of it when your show came on. There was no way to record a show for later viewing.

Of course race relations were much worse then. So were things for women and others. Job advancement wasn’t the same as it is today.

I wouldn’t go back for anything. The poorest people today ( even the homeless, who seem to often have really nice tents and weather gear, relatively ) have it better than in 1970.

I don’t care what things cost. Practically everybody is richer today.

The 1970s energy crisis as a result of issues in Israel and Iran did indeed help improve cars.

We had this thing called a 'library', with 'books', which helped me learn things outside my circle. Our schools even had a full-time librarian to help us with the technology. Even our church had a library, with a bunch of Tom Swift books.

We didn't live in the boonies like you did. On VHF we had 3 commercial network TV stations, an independent station, and PBS. On UHF there were more, including another PBS station, another independent station, and a commercial station in the Spanish International Network (SIN).

My parents could afford to buy a home and raise a family on a single income from my high school educated father. He died 10 years ago. My mother still gets benefits from his pension plan.

It's also true that cheap ass nylon tents are better than the canvas tents we used to camp in. While we metaphorically drown in plastic as the anthropogenic global warming predicted by the 1970s tightens its grip ever more.

Am I misunderstanding something or is your point - Poor people have air conditioning and better (but certainly not cheaper) medical outcomes, and netflix today, therefore they have a better quality of life than 1970? And people without homes have better tents and jackets, today?

Aren't these two different things?

Should "upper-middle class income" refer to your income regardless of COL, or should it refer to an arbitrary measure of what you can buy with it?

At least in my mind - if we were talking about statistical segmentation of income I think that’s right - but “middle class” and “upper middle class” denote a level of economic security, social status, lifestyle, disposable income whatever that I do think correlates with cost of living.

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