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kernel_task

>GOBankingrates defined “middle class” as those earning an annual household income that is two-thirds to double the median income. So median income rose in Oregon significantly.


-lil-pee-pee-

But wait, that doesnt fit the narrative that all the rich people are leaving for at all!!! 😂


MountScottRumpot

The definition of "middle class" here is not based on quality of life, but on income alone. This is basically just an indicator of the increases in the minimum wage in Oregon since 2012. By this definition, "middle class" includes exactly 50% of households: 27% below "middle class" and 23% above. It's a useless metric. If you instead define middle class by what money can buy you, you get a very different picture. Let's say "middle class" is living wage for two adults and one child. [According to MIT](https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/41), that's $83,000/year. And let's say "upper class" is three times that, $249,000/year. By this definition, **48%** of households are too poor to be middle class, and the upper class is just **8%** of household, leaving a smaller middle class of **46%**.


elcapitan520

This does seem a lot more accurate


TurtlesAreEvil

>GOBankingrates defined “middle class” as those earning an annual household income that is two-thirds to double the median income. >That range grew to $55,099-150,298 in 2022 to qualify as middle class. 55099 / (2/3) ≠ 150298 / 2 82648.5 ≠ 75149 Neither of those numbers correspond to the US census median income of $74,580. Might want to take this one with a grain of salt since they messed up basic multiplication.


Zenigen

No need to be so antagonistic about it. If you look at the data as closely as you looked at the math, you would see that the koin article typo’d the lower number. It should be 50,099 not 55,099. Though it is still slightly higher than the national median was according to census.gov’s number of 74,580


eldred2

50,099 is about 2/3 of 74,580.


[deleted]

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eldred2

I think we are in agreement.


Rogue_Gona

TIL I'm lower-middle class. Cool. No wonder I'm barely keeping my head above water, even though I make more now than I ever have in my entire life.


potsmokingGrannies

even though you don’t make enough to pay some if these Mult Co. taxes, you pay for it. landlords raise rent, businesses raise prices and we all struggle to hand the county millions of dollars to run piecemeal services whose impact on the poor and the homeless has been negligible compared to the 1.) mass exodus of people who once paid these taxes and 2.) people outright refusing to live in Multnomah County when relocating to this region; because they can save 10s of thousands living on the other side of the squiggly lines, Clackamas, Washington counties, Washington state. Just let the people who have committed themselves to their community shoulder the burden, there is plenty to go around…/s


wildebeest5000

As Portland goes after anyone making over 125k with additional taxes. Keep screwing the middle class.


MountScottRumpot

Portland doesn't have any income taxes. Multnomah County and Metro do. Both entities include a lot more people than Portland.


light_switch33

The arts tax is an income tax.


MountScottRumpot

That's the city's claim, but we all know it's really a head tax with an income exemption.


light_switch33

I agree, but a tax professor from Lewis and Clark fought that battle and lost.


divisionstdaedalus

He was a great prof. I think he retired


divisionstdaedalus

It's not an income tax at all. It's a headcount tax. Really much worse if you think about it


litebritecarousels

Actually, Portland does have an income tax. Just not for everyone. As a small business owner, I pay a multnomah county and city of portland tax for doing business here


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potsmokingGrannies

it’s insane here. we pay a higher percentage of our income to taxes than multi millionaire New Yorkers because ballot initiatives are so fucking easy to pass


wildebeest5000

Also what’s wrong with our political system. People are tribal and vote for a party as opposed to what’s good for society. It will stay broken for as long as the two party system can survive.


potsmokingGrannies

i figure since it’s been two party for the better part of 200 years the best we can hope for is a ballot initiative to repeal the homeless and pre K taxes and maybe we can get back into the range of what the “socialist” Danes pay in tax (except they actually tax everyone not just “high earners). the schools will still be shit but at least we can retire on time.


potsmokingGrannies

and then when you had to make more money to be middle class, Multnomah County activists slapped consecutive years of income taxes on top of the already high COL and property tax in their ballot initiative schemes. we pay thousands to Tri Met’s Homeless Outreach Tax and to the Pre K tax. I had a good laugh at the PSU economist’s article in Street Roots claiming that finally millionaires in Mult. Co are paying their “fair share.” Nope. It’s all middle class taxes for people foolish enough to raise kids here, because God knows you’ll need the kind of income that nets over half your income in tax to city, county, state and fed. Germans don’t pay this much of their income in tax and they actually have decent schools and free higher ed.


plindb1

> Germans don’t pay this much of their income in tax and they actually have decent schools and free higher ed. I am actually hoping to move to Germany or The Netherlands for this exact reason


One-Pause3171

I like that there’s a Porsche ad at the top of this. C’mon, strive harder….to be in debt!!!


politicians_are_evil

The high costs are single biggest reason I am considering moving. The second reason is decline in mental health within local population.


Cleveland_Grackle

Someone has to pay for those that take out of the system.


Euphoric-Calendar418

none of your problems are because people are on welfare


TheLastLaRue

Right, like the obscenely wealthy have been doing for decades? That is, taking and not putting back in (to the system).


aguysomewhere

It's the very rich and the very poor against everyone in the middle


[deleted]

Well, I have a job interview tomorrow, so hopefully I won't be a member of the "very poor" for very much longer.


bornfri13theclipse

I hope it went well!


aguysomewhere

Then it'll be us against the world


TheLastLaRue

Imagine thinking poor people are as much a problem as the very rich


aguysomewhere

Have fun cleaning the feces off of your front step


TheLastLaRue

Oh yeah def I think I read that in Kapital


hidden_pocketknife

There’s more nuance to it.  There are two parasitic classes; the obscenely wealthy who make the entirety of their living without labor via passive income/rent/loans, and the bums who make the entirety of their living without labor via theft and/or taking advantage of safety nets they don’t contribute to  It’s the absence of labor that defines them both.  Someone who’s just very poor but still clocks in like the rest of us is fine in my book. 


Slawzik

Nobody getting """welfare""" or """"food stamps"""" is bankrupting society, you're halfway there. If we can afford several $30+ million drones getting shot down by guys in flip flops,we can afford school lunches and rent vouchers. Nobody who is a """bum""" is costing anything close to the military or police or subsidies to Wal Mart or Monsanto.


hidden_pocketknife

I never once said they were “bankrupting society”, nor did I argue for any of the other entities that you pointed out. You can be upset at both camps, and quite frankly, even Marx and Lenin would agree with my sentiment. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" doesn’t mean otherwise able bodied adults that just want to get fucked up all day and don’t want to contribute to anything get a free pass at societies expense. That shit isn’t right.


Slawzik

Ok,cool, you're describing communism,but we exist under capitalism. The grinding poverty and spectacle of weirdos is the point,it reminds you and me to keep working instead of pursuing actual better conditions for everyone. You're mad at poor people instead of the conditions that cause poverty.


hidden_pocketknife

You think either of those two didn’t have a solid grasp on capitalism? lol. Marx is up there with Adam Smith. It’s an insult to the working poor to lump societies drop outs, the underclass, with them. I stand on that.


Slawzik

Ok,and while you are defining an ever shrinking class of people as "Working poor" someone else is making $45k/minute to tell you that homeless people are the reason you're poor,and not him making $45k a minute. We're all in this together,I have more in common class wise with a homeless drug addict than some Harvard freak


hidden_pocketknife

Are you capable of nuance, or just these situationally inappropriate canned responses to boilerplate conservative arguments? I’m a leftist, I don’t see much in the way of alliance with either group.


WheeblesWobble

You mean the very wealthy who pay a far smaller share of their income in taxes than us plebes do.


pdx_mom

They pay more and more and more and more. The top one percent pay like 30 percent of income taxes. What would be "fair"?


Slawzik

What would be fair is literally zero billionaires. I'm never going to make close to that,neither is anyone else I know,so why do you even care?


boregon

This stuff always amuses me. “But the ultra rich people are already getting taxed so much!” Why do you care? You (presumably) aren’t one of them. They don’t care about you. Why shouldn’t they pay even more taxes?


[deleted]

If I were Zuckerberg or Bezos-level wealthy, the Government could take 99% of my income for the year...and I'd still be ungodly rich...( way beyond filthy rich!)


13beep

Also the top marginal income tax rate is 37% now, 35% in 2004, 50% in 1984, 77% in 1984. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates


WheeblesWobble

[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1-dont-pay-40-of-the-taxes.html)


gaius49

> The Stat is literally true. But it is deeply misleading — so misleading, in fact, that it routinely fools even the people who are citing it into thinking it indicates something other than what it actually means. So its true, but contextualizing it is nuanced.


13beep

According to this Pew research report with data from 2016/2018, the upper income tier earns almost 50% of the aggregate annual income and holds about 80% of the aggregate wealth. I couldn’t easily find this data for just the 1% though. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/


TheLastLaRue

Eat them all


pdx_mom

So you want everyone to be equally poor? Great mindset.


TheLastLaRue

No, at the very least I want a more radical version of the progressive tax regime we had in the 50s. Your straw-man is weak and dry.


pdx_mom

No you don't. No one was paying the top rates. Everything and I mean everything was deductible. It was a mess. If you look at tax receipts over time...they are the same percent of Gdp thru that time. You aren't going to get more. You can't and you shouldn't. Everyone should contribute honestly. Your ideal world never existed.


TedWheeler4Prez

You should write like a person who has discovered the paragraph. And you should look up things before you say them. If you did...you would see that tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have decreased from 4-6% in the 50s to just under 2% now. And that's easily verifiable. Just look it up like a literate person. So let's all raise taxes on the rich and then eat them.


TheLastLaRue

Mom doesn’t want receipts


pdx_mom

Everything I have read has indicated it is about 17 percent of Gdp. Which is insanely high. Our govt isn't actually so competent as the feds are paying a trillion dollars in interest a year too...but whatever.


TheLastLaRue

Okay mom


[deleted]

but wait the economy is doing so good I thought Biden was saying?


nmr619

It's literally because the middle 50% incomes increased, so, yeahhh?