Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

"Middle Class" in America is supposedly as little as $40K per year, but that number seems to be chosen to keep the figures from looking so grim; it really takes $80-100K a year to live what Americans consider a fulfilling life. Upper Middle Class is well into the 6-figures, usually via two high wage-earners, maybe total $250K per year in a city. A healthy society would expect an ever-increasing Middle Class as a percentage of the population, but America has not been experiencing that since the so-called Reagan Revolution when the focus shifted from creating wealth to accumulating it.

To begin, the winner-take-all aspect of our society tends to make The Rich richer, and doesn't have a lot of room for anyone else. The fact is, the top end of our population is interchangeable; how someone becomes a high-paid banker is much more a result of their family connections & fraternity than merit, and that person could be replaced by lottery from 10 million other competent people. It's luck that brought them there: inherited, right place, right time, whatever? Wealth becomes concentrated in those that already have it; for a Middle Class to increase, there has to be a constant redistribution of wealth, one way or another, and if Market Forces won't do it, taxation will have to.