who are the rich was re professors whining about pay candidate clinton promised to tax the rich and most folks thought that was a pretty nifty idea then president clinton said he wanted families who make more than to bear of the new tax burden and many were quick to complain that their six figure income does not make them one of the well to do it s particularly ironic to me that it s in those traditionally liberal enclaves of the bay area and academia where the wealthy are struggling so to fit themselves into the mantle of just regular working class folk nobody will ever admit to being rich everybody s middle class so who are the rich well i ll throw out some stats from the census and let you be the judge va negvpyr mzimmersc e qk fn netcom com mzimmers netcom com michael zimmers jevgrf in article qcdvbinn ti elroy jpl nasa gov fogarty sir c jpl nasa gov tim fogarty writes that would be about to thousand us and that is what tenured professors can expect to make for a phd with say years experience is a lot less than what he could be making in industry oh as a year veteran of silicon valley i ve seen precious few employment ads that call for phds and k is hardly chump change it s well above the median household income for the state bay area average household income is in the mid range national average is the bay area has nearly twice the national average of six figure income households vs the cost of living here may be high but i don t think it s twice the national average in los angeles modest home prices can be a square foot tract house in a bay area working class neighborhood goes for about i doubt that the los angeles market is all that different it would appear that this definition of modest is perhaps a bit immoderate so what they re no cheaper for those who are gainfully employed in california is not upper middle class it depends upon your definition it s clearly above average it is more than what two thirds of california households make seems to me that belonging to the upper one third is not an unreasonable definition of upper middle class note that if that professor s spouse earns they become one of clinton s rich families here s a breakdown of national california and bay area household incomes k k k k us the census bureau did some weird ca rounding here more like ba and to add a little prespective a minimum wage earner working hours week makes year the poverty line for a family of four is if they make up to twice that the government considers them to be working poor say we decide to call this the lower middle class then how bout k annual income is middle class k is upper middle class k is rich k is filthy rich and is bill gates make sense timr there s nothing surer the rich get rich and the poor get poorer in the meantime in between time ain t we got fun raymond egan
