It was 350K in 2009, in the midst of a crisis (incomes of people like that have a lot to do with performance-based bonuses, stock appreciation and the like, so they dipped a lot in the crisis, much more than oridinary people's). In 2012 it was already $560K.
And the definition for upper class as being top 1% is arbitrary, it is in fact invented by Obama during his first presidential campaign, solely for finger-pointing (he could safely say 1% is not many people so they won't impact election results enough and safe to be finger-pointed).
Upper class are ought to be people who don't derive their income from work, but from their property - business profits, stock dividends, rent etc. - in all societies upper class are those who DON'T depend on salary, and many of them don't work at all. So it is natural to define upper class income threshold as a point above which less than 50% of income comes from employment. In the present United States, this is about 3-4 million bucks a year per household. This will be economically defined upper class, not just some 'people rich enough to hate them'. So McCain was closer to reality back in 2008 is his upper class definition.
I personally don't know anyone making that much, but i can safely say that all people i know making 150-1000k a year will be broke months or at most, a year or two if they stop working, with one exception (a guy living in East Asia with about 400k of annual income, who never married or had kids). So they are not upper class. And i am speaking of the places which are cheaper and have lower living standards than USA.
Hahaha it shows percentiles above 100% for income above 220k for women and 450k for men (both unmarried and living alone = all 3 figures equal) - that javascript is broken.
US rank isn't very informative though. It doesn't take into account cost of living, or (assuming they're using pre-tax salary) even the difference in state taxes.
A comfortable salary in Houston would be much less comfortable in San Francisco because you're suddenly paying 10% of your income to state taxes and paying 4x as much rent.
And the definition for upper class as being top 1% is arbitrary, it is in fact invented by Obama during his first presidential campaign, solely for finger-pointing (he could safely say 1% is not many people so they won't impact election results enough and safe to be finger-pointed).
Upper class are ought to be people who don't derive their income from work, but from their property - business profits, stock dividends, rent etc. - in all societies upper class are those who DON'T depend on salary, and many of them don't work at all. So it is natural to define upper class income threshold as a point above which less than 50% of income comes from employment. In the present United States, this is about 3-4 million bucks a year per household. This will be economically defined upper class, not just some 'people rich enough to hate them'. So McCain was closer to reality back in 2008 is his upper class definition.
I personally don't know anyone making that much, but i can safely say that all people i know making 150-1000k a year will be broke months or at most, a year or two if they stop working, with one exception (a guy living in East Asia with about 400k of annual income, who never married or had kids). So they are not upper class. And i am speaking of the places which are cheaper and have lower living standards than USA.