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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (209542)	11/26/2012 12:23:17 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 540887

Which is why very few people would consider themselves rich. However to families with a $50k/yr income, those making $250k per year are indeed rich. And to most people in 3rd world countries, those average American families are very rich. And so on and so forth.

To: bentway who wrote (209542)	11/26/2012 1:58:10 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540887

My definition of rich is a) you never HAD to work to feed, house or cloth yourself, b) you have access to a trust fund or sufficient dividend stream that will sustain you at a upper middle class level of comfort or higher without working, or c) earned so much in your life time that no illness could not possibly wipe you out, and d) you never have to consider whether you can send your kids to a particular college because you can't afford a better one or e) you can afford to buy impulse gifts at Cartier. Someone who earns their keep, started with a menial job and now has achieved the life of leisure may simply be "retired" or "modestly affluent". Who doesn't want to live in an affluent society like that? Not me. We have removed many tax structures that used to help the upper middle class people with spiky income blips (like income averaging) - a stock win here, a banner sales year there, or other one time income pops (like one-time casino or game show winnings) may temporarily solve cash flow problems, but not really make you rich. Regressive taxes like AMT only hurt those who don't have enough to risk their wealth by deferring income into the following year. So, now amongst the supposed "rich" are senior engineers and managers with working spouses, most doctors and non-partner lawyers, many two income professionals such as nurses, etc. I DON'T consider these people people necessarily rich - they simply may be the remaining tatters of the American intelligentsia / bourgeoisie, building the value in our economy and creating jobs. But, even these people are now under wage pressure. We have a handle-left, blade-up hockey stick income distribution on a log scale with the smallest percentage of people having the most assets. The knee of the curve is around $200,000 income (that number could be more like $300k in expensive places). That is close to where I'd say one might be rightly called "rich", especially if that is year-over-year, and that still leaves a huge amount of wealth on or the right side of the curve held by a very small number of people - the truly "rich", IMO.