I’m gonna talk a little bit about wealth, income, economic inequality, and the way the deliberately vague and ever-changing definition of middle-class is harmful to progress, because I’m tired of both the “$150k/year isn’t rich” posts AND most of the reactions to them.

Little background just so you understand my own history here: my dad is from a family of tremendous wealth. We have my grandmother’s papers which include a letter she wrote complaining about how the Great Depression meant her debutante party wasn’t as big as her sisters’.

My mom’s family are immigrants who went from poor to middle class in blue collar jobs over the course of her lifetime.

I was raised in what most people would call “upper middle class” surroundings — 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house on 1/4 acre of land in a suburb— in a public school district that included massive, mind-boggling estates. I only half-jokingly refer to this as “Gatsbyland.”

The best way I can describe Gatsbyland is that I once went to a party for a 13 year old girl that involved a monkey on rollerskates in a tuxedo serving cocktails.

One of the defining moments I remember in terms of my understanding of economic injustice was when in second grade we were taught about Martin Luther King, Jr, and my mother went ballistic because we were taught that “he was middle class...just like you!”

My parents’ own economic status shifted dramatically when my mom (first in her family to graduate college) went to grad school and became a teacher, and again when she became a principal. For most of my adult life, my mom’s income has been higher than my dad’s.

In the meantime, I spent a good chunk of my late 20s eating cabbage for dinner and skiving the free egg drop soup from my coworker’s lunches because my salary—above the median household income in the US at the time— was not enough for both rent and food.

(Yes, my parents would have helped. Yes, I was definitely too embarrassed to ask)

I remember posting on Livejournal once in desperation because after rent & bills I only had $25 to last the month one month, and someone my mom’s age was like “have you tried giving up Starbucks?”

Ten years later, I am making less than twice what I made then, and that puts me in the top 20% of incomes in the US for my age. It is a massive, massive increase in quality of life (not to mention being married means there’s another person contributing to expenses).

Getting beyond that baseline “affording bills and necessities” stage is literally life-changing. I don’t think anyone who has never been there understands how massive the paradigm shift in someone’s life is when there is money left over.

Anyway, to go back to that second grade Martin Luther King, Jr., moment, the nebulous concept of a middle class that gets redefined every time an economist wants to make a political point is bad for us all. I would have been considered middle class back when I was eating cabbage—

—and probably “upper middle class” now, when I can afford to buy new pants but can’t afford a home bigger than a one-bedroom apartment (remember, in the top 20% of incomes for my age!)

Here’s the thing: middle class is a definition that shouldn’t depend on earnings or wealth. It should depend on quality of life. Middle class should mean that you can afford housing that safely and comfortably accommodates your family, bills, food, and have *something left over.*

Middle class should mean that you can go to school without debt, or with minor debts that are easily repayable in no more time than the amount of time you spent in school. Middle class should mean that you are never just one month or one emergency away from financial ruin.

Middle class should mean that you can do all of these things without leaving your birthplace or your chosen community.

So, yeah, someone making $150K a year is MASSIVELY wealthy compared to the average American, and we already know that the average American is massively wealthy compared to people in the rest of the world. But middle class? Middle class *should* be that $150K lifestyle.

That’s what we should be shooting for, is for everyone to be able to live like someone who makes $150K (still way more than I make!) does. Everyone should have that. That should be the marker for success: everyone being able to live like the dad who makes $150K.

So if the dad who makes $150K opposes income and wealth equality for all? Then, yeah, actually, he is a problem and a hindrance to economic reform. There are lots of people making $150K who don’t want everyone to have their quality of life. That’s evil.

But we also do need to talk about how razor thin that line between survival and comfort is, how massive the difference between someone who makes enough to love and someone who makes enough to live plus another $10k a year is.

The dad making $150K could (and probably should) give $10k each to five different people and the GAIN of $10K for each of them would have a much higher impact on their lives than the loss of $50K to him, every time.

But— and this is where I think people get stuck on distinctions— Jeff Bezos makes $13B A DAY. That’s nearly $542M an hour. That’s nearly 87 THOUSAND dads who make $150k a day. In TEN YEARS he could give every person in the US— person, not household— $150K.

It would take the dad who makes $150K/year 33,000 years to give everyone $10K. They need to be the targets of economic reform because they have often bought into capitalism and stand as a barrier to equality, not because redistributing their wealth is an effective solution.

(Yes, I am aware billionaires’ assets aren’t liquid. Money is also fake)

But focusing on things from the perspective of who makes what and how much makes someone middle class is also buying into capitalism. We have to break down the competitive attitudes capitalism instills in us and focus on what actually matters, which is quality of human life.

It is feasible to live in a world where everyone gets to live like someone making $150K/year. But it is not feasible to do that in a world where people making $13B/day exist. We need to build the world that makes the first possible and makes the second impossible.