Here’s the broader situation: 30 percent of American households are classified by Pew as low income, and 19 percent are upper income. And yet a 2024 Gallup survey found that only 12 percent of Americans identified themselves as “lower class” and just 2 percent as “upper class.” In short: No one wants to be perceived as poor, and no one rich ever feels rich enough.
This is just nonsense. Being in the upper class doesn’t mean being in the top 19% of earners. Those 19% are middle class and they probably have never even interacted with anyone in the upper class. An upper-class person isn’t someone who earns a $100k a year or even $1000k a year. In fact, he probably doesn’t even have a job. CBS has a headline right now that says “Trump headlining $1 million a person super PAC dinner as stocks sink over tariffs”. The people at his dinner (or the ones who could come but choose not to) are in the upper class.
Edit: As for the rest of the article, it makes a good point about the disconnect between the working class and the middle class, but I’m not sure that this disconnect is bigger now than it used to be.
Edit 2: Part of the disconnect is due to different values rather than different incomes, and this should be emphasized because Trump is popular with the working class (and unpopular with the middle class) not because he doesn’t have much money but because he rejects middle-class values.
It’s all relative, and highly dependent on where you live. Someone making 100k in Arkansas can live like a monarch, but in NYC they’d barely be able to make ends meet, if that. And NYC for damn sure is a more interesting place to live than anywhere in Arkansas.
One can of course always argue over what percentile makes you which class (and to to what degree percentiles are useful for this question in the first place).
As for the question of influence, Piketty for example, while calling the top 10% the “upper class”, calls the top 1% the “ruling class”, which seems like a decent way to undercore this point.
This is just nonsense. Being in the upper class doesn’t mean being in the top 19% of earners. Those 19% are middle class and they probably have never even interacted with anyone in the upper class. An upper-class person isn’t someone who earns a $100k a year or even $1000k a year. In fact, he probably doesn’t even have a job. CBS has a headline right now that says “Trump headlining $1 million a person super PAC dinner as stocks sink over tariffs”. The people at his dinner (or the ones who could come but choose not to) are in the upper class.
Edit: As for the rest of the article, it makes a good point about the disconnect between the working class and the middle class, but I’m not sure that this disconnect is bigger now than it used to be.
Edit 2: Part of the disconnect is due to different values rather than different incomes, and this should be emphasized because Trump is popular with the working class (and unpopular with the middle class) not because he doesn’t have much money but because he rejects middle-class values.
It’s all relative, and highly dependent on where you live. Someone making 100k in Arkansas can live like a monarch, but in NYC they’d barely be able to make ends meet, if that. And NYC for damn sure is a more interesting place to live than anywhere in Arkansas.
One can of course always argue over what percentile makes you which class (and to to what degree percentiles are useful for this question in the first place).
As for the question of influence, Piketty for example, while calling the top 10% the “upper class”, calls the top 1% the “ruling class”, which seems like a decent way to undercore this point.