Eva Peron... ???

@Merry Andrew,

Andrew . . . with the exception of the year I earned 1/3 that amount, I have basically earned a 1/5 all my working life, post-motherhood.

I think I wrote here years ago that I was no longer middle class and several people answered that you are what you think you are. Well, I earn so little that I have to call myself in the bottom quintile and therefore not middle class despite my education.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

How could 6K . . . $6,000. . . be middle class when it is below the federal poverty level and has been for a long time?

it is an equivalent sum in other countries. If we used US middle class earnings to gauge other countries it would be too skewed.

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@plainoldme,

Household incomes of 100K or more in America are not relatively rare, but single jobs which pay 100 or more still are. For most people in America the real question is how much of what they earn they can keep out of the hands of governments and landords or mortgage companies.

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@gungasnake,

As you can see from this graph, personal tax burden isn't so bad here

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@panzade,

Average tax burdon in the US is pretty nearly meaningless any more. We now have half the population paying basically no taxes and increasing parts of the burden as incomes increase with increasingly larger segments of the public having no stake in the system or in trying to control costs. Normal for middle class people is having taxes over fifty percent when you add every form of tax burden up.

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Here are some excerpts from an ABC poll on what it means to be middle class:

All told, 45 percent of Americans define themselves as middle class (about what it's been on average in polls since the 1960s), compared with 39 percent who see themselves as working class or less well-off than that, and 14 percent as upper-middle class or better off. Women are slightly more likely than men to consider themselves middle class, 48 percent vs. 42 percent, and more seniors put themselves there -- 51 percent, vs. 43 percent of middle-aged adults.

Average incomes for people who call themselves middle class are about $55,000 a year, versus about $35,000 for those who call themselves working class or lower and about $95,000 for those who say they're upper-middle class or better off. But income is far from the sole determinant of self-defined middle class status, likely because family size, expenses, local costs of living and other circumstances also come into it. Even among people with incomes under $25,000 a year, 41 percent describe themselves as middle class. So do 38 percent of those with household incomes over $100,000.

Education also seems to impact how people perceive their class status. People with college degrees are more apt than others to consider themselves middle class, upper-middle class or better off than that. Just 20 percent of college graduates call themselves working class or lower, compared with 46 percent of Americans who haven't completed college.

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@gungasnake,

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/fed_incometax_ff183graph3-2.jpg

Quote:

Normal for middle class people is having taxes over fifty percent

A little exaggerated

Head of Households pay @25% rate from$45k-113k on personal income

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@plainoldme,

If you think about the way you describe it, you might notice some really big differences between the way class is thought of in the US versus other countries. It doesn't really count for that much in the US. In Argentina immediately after WW-II apparently, it counted for a lot more and amounted to a perfect storm of vicious class antagonisms and hatreds.

One thing which is really hard for Americans to grasp is that there actually have been and still might be places on Earth in which middle class people are viewed by anybody as oppressors or any such. For Americans, that just does not compute at all and yet I've heard interviews with people who lived in Chiang Kai-shek's China and that is precisely what they were describing.

In the US there simply isn't any legitimate multi-generational poverty. What WE have is a rogue political party which seeks to keep certain identifiable voting blocks in permanent states of ignorance, dependence, poverty, and bondage and use them as clubs to beat the middle class over the head with.

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@panzade,

Looks like that graph is showing total percent of taxes paid. That wouldn't be the same as tax rates. Even at relatively low rates, we pay the high percentage of the total because there are so many of us. If I'm interpreting the graph right, 1% of the taxpayers are paying maybe 42% of the taxes, which sounds pretty steep. By the use of "Taxpayers", they seem to be excluding the part of the population that pays no income taxes.

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@roger,

Quote:

That wouldn't be the same as tax rates.

No. I posted the median income tax rate below the graph

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@gungasnake,

I am sorry you fail to understand that America is a classist society. Because of your comments here over many years, I know you mean the Democrats when you speak of rogue parties but ask yourself a few questions: Who sent jobs overseas? Why has income remained static for 80% of the population for so long?

I am surprised that you find Chiang's China an oppressive society. I would think you would apply that description to mainland China.

And how can you say there isn't any multi-generational poverty in the US?

I strongly suggest you read Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name.

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@plainoldme,

Quote:

... but ask yourself a few questions: Who sent jobs overseas? Why has income remained static for 80% of the population for so long?

Multiple causes as usual. Unions which have outlived their usefulness, treaties, corporations which donate at least as much to dems as to pubbies.

A friend notes (email) that:

Quote:

...There was a principle of law affirmed by SCOTUS in the second decade of the 20th Century that says a corporate officer or board member is guilty of malfeasance if he knowingly acts in any manner that does not increase shareholder equity and/or return. This principle has been de facto adopted throughout the world. Corporations in effect are not allowed to better serve their customers, unless that is a side effect of increasing their shareholders' stake, their primary mission under the law.

I think international mega corporations need some serious restrictions. We can debate what they ought to be, but it's purely academic: no restrictions will be imposed. No politician bites the hand that feeds it...

Quote:

I am surprised that you find Chiang's China an oppressive society. I would think you would apply that description to mainland China.

Chanka-Jack was bad, the commie regime which followed it much worse. It's not obvoius to me the average Chinese would be much worse off had Japan won the war.

Quote:

And how can you say there isn't any multi-generational poverty in the US?
.

I said no LEGITIMATE multigenerational poverty in America. Such multi-generational poverty as there is arises from the dem party and its activities. Multi-generational poverty doesn't benefit pubbies.

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http://www.evitaperon.org/

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http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r53/icebear46/perons.jpg

I mean, you have to like that, don't you? Kind of says that a grade A love story doesn't always have to involve people under 30...

Utterly true to eachother, Evita organizes a mass protest to bring Juan back from exile when she might could have taken the country over on her own... Anybody have any sort of a mental picture of SlicKKK KKKlintler remaining faithful to a wife dying of cancer for two years??

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@gungasnake,

you started a thoughtful and interesting thread. Why do you have to debase it with Clinton ravings?

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@panzade,

Just noticing the differences...

Somebody living in the US over the last 40 years wouldn't really have a way of knowing that there'd ever been anything you might call a legitimate political left in the world,or even legitimate populists, especially when the dems go to such lengths to villify and demonize every real populist who ever comes down the road and, by that, I mean the Sarah Palins and George Allens of the world.

Closest thing to a US category for the Perons would be populists. A US citizen would figure them for leftists but the term doesn't really work for them. A US citizen would hear a term like 'descamisado' and figure it meant somebody who couldn't afford a shirt i.e. a member of some dem voting block while it apparently meant guys who took shirts off to work in the Argentine sun i.e. the people doing the heavy lifting in the place.

As near as I can tell and despite anything they might have not gotten right in the time they had, the Perons appear to have been totally straight up. Several of the things you notice would only bother somebody unfamiliar with the setting. They played hard-ball politics, but so did everybody else at the time. The expensive wardrobes bothered American reporters; I would guess that Argentines figured that a guy like Peron who had a woman like that and DIDN'T dress her as well as he did would be some sort of an asshole.

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@panzade,

In case you might have missed it or have any lingering doubts as to what you were seeing in Slick, you might want to check this out:

http://reason.com/archives/1994/11/01/can-the-president-think

Edith Efron was a friend of Ann Raynd's and a sort of a heavyweight political analyst. As she notes the dems knew what they were dealing with in Slick no later than summer 93.

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Sigh! Gunga went on for several days without name calling but had to resort to his usual.

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@plainoldme,

Part of me wants to see the left in America become legitimate again. For that to happen, lefties and dems are gonna have to come to comprehend that they have a problem, sort of like the ritual thing with Alcaholics Anonymous. Talking about Slick in realistic terms is not "name calling"; it should be viewed as therapy.

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Check this out:

http://www.evitaperon.org/part1.htm

Quote:

...Eva's radio programs appeared on the Radio Argentina, El Mundo, and, finally, in 1943, on Radio Belgrano when she began a series which would continue until 1945, "The Biographies of Illustrious Women," among them Elizabeth I of England, Sarah Bernhard, Margarita Well de Pat, Isadora Duncan, Mme. Chiang Kai Shek, Catherine the Great....

I mean, if a young woman were to ask me for a better scheme for educating herself to rule a country, I'm not sure I'd know what to tell her...

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Eva Peron... ???

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