Musk would know a lot about being a parasite on our society.
Right, that also says that the middle class is not âmuch smaller.â
Have you actually read it - just to show two of many interesting points
â . A sort of irony, given the public discussion, is that the middle class, if defined as the middle 60, canât shrink. It can get better or worse off, meaning its average income level can rise or fall and its share of the total income pie can grow or shrink, but its size canât change.â
â So, in the U.S., during the decades that we studied, the size of the middle class was stable, but the fact that these households were becoming more distant from the ultra rich brought costs that made life more difficult, more risky, and more precarious.â
The way Pew defines âmiddle-income,â it can grow or shrink.
âMiddle-incomeâ Americans are adults whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median, after incomes have been adjusted for household size.
Their income can grow or shrink but not really their overall size as it is defined around the national median
The number and percentage of people or households who are middle-income can grow or shrink, so long as you donât define it as the middle 60% (or whatever) by population.
By Pewâs definition (between 2/3 and 2X the median), the percentage of people in middle-class households shrank from 61% in 1971 to 52% in 2016, the lower-income percentage grew 4%, and the upper-income percentage grew 5%.
Peony: I have always been curious about the âmiddle classâ definition in the USA. I always feel âMiddle classâ in China means you are rich and successful. (Well, not super rich like billionaire!) Many families dream to be middle class in China. But I donât feel it is the case in the US and people donât proudly say âwe have finally become a middle class family!â. I wonder why 
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Excusing it by ignoring it. And the customersâ bad behavior was the entire point of the opinion piece.
I agree. But I think we should acknowledge that the opinion piece is written by a person who is complaining about being treated badly by the people right in front of her. And that it is up to the people right in front of her to stop behaving badly. Maybe we canât change the system overnight (or ever - Iâm not in a very optimistic mood today). But how hard is it to just not be an abusive jerk?
As long as we have tipping system in restaurants nothing will change. It gives too many idiots the excuse that a waiter depends in them and so they can treat them as they want
I think honkman believes that if American restaurants paid servers a living wage, customers would stop treating them like shit.
Not all of them as there is a baseline level of idiots in any society but the number of incidents would be significantly lower.
That CNBC widget tells me Iâm upper class, but I couldnât afford to live anywhere near my neighborhood if we hadnât moved here 20+ years ago, let alone buy a second home or fly there on a private jet.
Middle class to me today . Is driving a Tesla with payments.
If we use Tesla as the standard for evaluation only California has a middle class
Itâs not the tipping systemâs fault that people got especially awful when the pandemic began. A lot of what restaurant employees have to deal with comes from mask/vax resisters. Retail employees were going through the same thing, and thereâs no tipping system at Target.
My impression is that most Tesla purchasers are high-income technophiles who can easily afford a $100K iPad with wheels. Obviously California has a higher population of those people than any other state.
Taking on significant debts relative to your income to buy a Tesla might be lower-class social climbing.
You would be correct for the models S and X (and I guess the Roadster). That demographic was the envy of every of every automaker b/c they had equivalent purchasing power to the demographic buying Bentleys and Rolls Royces, except they had little interest in conventional automobiles. Luxury car manufacturer havenât been rushing to replace all hard buttons w/ screens in their interiors for environmental compliance; itâs b/c they want to steal back those customers.
While the people buying 3s and Ys are presumably less wealthy, I bet a fair number of them can still comfortably afford the cars. The huge EV credit (now mainly phased out) was also very helpful, and, b/c of the branding power, Teslaâs also retain a lot more of their value than other EVs (which tend to do much worse than combustion-engined cars).
Iâll be interesting to see what happens in terms of Tesla sales, w/ conventional auto manufacturers coming out w/ so many EVs and if Tesla canât improve the quality of their cars. Strangely, I think the very wealthy tend to be far more accepting of quality issues than do âthe middle class.â