Plethora of people living in megamansions in Franklin Lakes, etc. who think of themselves as ordinary middle class citizens.

you indicated.

To me it really demonstrates how of touch those people are with how poor most people are compared to them

He was shocked when I pointed out that that put him in the top 2% in the nation, and we live in a moderate cost of living state (income taxes some of the highest in the country but housing moderate when compared to the coasts.

how many people he supports with that 250K a year

He is in a Fox bubble like most of the people in my department. The other moderate left leaving only me.

Our top state tax bracket is 9% and starts at $63K. Probably $180K of his family's income is under Social Security. With that in mind his family probably pays a lower overall tax percentage than my family whose entire income is subject to S.S. and our income is considerably less than his.

Both of us are paying a whole lot more in taxes than Mitt Romney on a percentage income basis.

If you are making 1 mil and your boss is making 32 mil you might not consider yourself in his class.

I know plenty of people who make a lot of money but still honor the middle class values they grew up with and vote against themselves when it comes to taxes.

live beyond their means with $14,000 a month mortgages. So they have the nice house, nice cars and nice neighborhoods but since their greed and materialism overburdens them with bills and expenses, they feel middle class because, even with a million dollars a year, they are struggling to hold on to all that stuff. I see it all the time here in central NJ. If they would just scale back their wants, they could live very comfortably instead of feeling always behind the curve with a million dollars a year. But they are like elephants that eat themselves into famine.

Your scenario is played out all over the country, every day. I see them in gas guzzlers punching it at every stop light. Supporting Wall St. to share in the proceeds of expanding death & suffering for all the world over. Caring not one inkling for the fate of their country, offspring, animals or legacy. That legacy is assured now. Future generations will look back and lament the loss of clean water, of forests and fish, of extinct animals and unpredictable weather patterns. They will level that finger at those who even though they knew what the ramifications were, continued head first into oblivion.

It's much about where you think you belong and who you belong with, what you aspire to and how you think you can reach your goals.

It's a phenomenon that keeps a third or more of people who could qualify for assistance from applying to get it.

Apparently, some very successful people also don't want to disconnect to middleclass values.

It's well understood that 'middleclass' isn't defined by income although it seems like it should be.

That makes it a curiosity which is often commented on in polls of American attitude such as the following...and after you've read that you can reply with a link to something that supports your assertion.

http://www.startribune.com/local/141307823.html?refer=y
Middle class: A state of mind

Updated: March 4, 2012 - 10:48 AM


Dreams dictate America's definition of middle class.

"It is more emotional than scientific," says Tom Gillaspy, Minnesota's demographer.

Roughly 53 percent of Americans called themselves middle class in a Pew Foundation survey conducted during the early days of the Great Recession. Among them were people making less than $20,000 a year and people making more than $150,000. Nearly eight in 10 of them agreed that a middle-class lifestyle is harder to maintain now than it was five years ago. One in four people blamed the government. One in seven blamed oil prices. And one in nine blamed themselves.


and here

http://www.lvrj.com/news/19978049.html

and here

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-04-10/news/0804100064_1_middle-class-middle-class-pew-report

and here

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-04-10/news/0804100064_1_middle-class-middle-class-pew-report

by attitude is a monstrosity intended to disappear the very real divisions of class in america.

I don't share your moral objection to the attitude, though I do see how this over adoption of middleclass-ness may be harmful in some ways. From one angle it may seem to merely blur socio-economic class structure...from other angles it seems to define and maintain the structure of American social class. It's not hard to see how this contributes to American racism and the connection of race and poverty. And it's not hard to see how personal choices get made around class membership.

Middleclass values have much to do with how Americans percieve public policy/programs as acceptable or not. If a program can be interpreted as meeting middleclass values it's acceptable. If is interpreted otherwise it isn't. For example, the social security survival benefit for minors is percieved as earned (a strong middleclass value) by the dead parent rather than as a handout to a minor child. Consequently, people like Paul Ryan don't see it as a government handout/socialist program that benefited themselves but as something a parent did for them. But, Paul Ryan does see housing and food assistance to infants and children (programs not directed at the middleclass but at the lower class) as an unearned handout, Ryan--and many others--object to the program.

Over the past year there have been several newspaper stories documenting disdainful opinions about young adults, college grads, of middleclass families applying for and receiving food assistance. The message being that taking food assistance is not appropriate for members of that class. Something over a year ago a politician made the comment that food assistance was like feeding stray dogs...it just attracts more of them. There's lots of evidence of middleclassness as the source of class related hatefulness.

Recently an article suggested that American assistance programs are under-enrolled by 1/4 to 1/3. It is quite possible that underenrollment is associated with views of what is appropriate for a member of the middleclass. People may have to much 'pride' (which is to say, they hold the middleclass values of self-reliance and independence to dearly) to apply to a program that is for 'other people'.

I read a while back that there are people who make $30,000 and think they are in the top 1%.

Go figure.

and rich people are no different.

Rich folk tend not to want to think of themselves as privileged, especially if they were born into it. Everyone likes to think of themselves as the underdog. Like how the Romney's were "living on the edge," living hand-to-mouth off of stock options.

Intuitively that makes sense because it confirm the American ethos of equality.

That is an observation and not necessarily an endorsement of that sentiment.