by Mark Silva
Nearly half of all Americans count themselves among the middle class, and four in 10 of them say they are struggling in today's economy.
Among those with college degrees, three in four say they are "comfortably" middle class or even moving up in life, yet 25 percent are struggling. Among those without a college degree, twice as many are struggling to hold their place in life. These are among the findings of an ABC World News poll that will kick off the network's series about "Saving the Middle Class'' this evening.
That self-identified middle class is about the size that it has been, on average, in polls conducted since the 1960s, ABC reports. About 39 percent view themselves as working class or less well-off, about 14 percent as upper-middle class or better off.
Women are slightly more likely than men to consider themselves middle class -- 48 percent vs. 42 percent, and more seniors see themselves that way -- 51 percent vs. 43 percent of middle-aged adults.
The average income for people who call themselves middle class is about $55,000 a year, versus about $35,000 for those who call themselves working class or lower and about $95,000 for those who say they're upper-middle class or better off.
Yet income is not the only factor: Even among people with incomes under $25,000 a year, 41 percent describe themselves as middle class. So do 38 percent of those with household incomes over $100,000 a year.
People with college degrees are more likely than others to view themselves as middle class, upper-middle class or better off than that.
There is widespread agreement about the meaning of the term: Anywhere from 67 to 80 percent of those surveyed say "a necessary part" of being middle class means being able to afford things like an occasional new car and vacation travel (67 and 71 percent, respectively), and to be able to save money, buy little luxuries and own a home (77 to 80 percent viewing those as defining criteria.)
The ABC World News poll was conducted Feb. 26 through March 2 by Social Science Research Solutions of Media, Pa. , and the survey fo 1,005 adults carries a possible 4 percentage point margin of error. See the whole poll here: ABC Poll.pdf
Comments
IT'S GOING TO TAKE MORE THAN A YEAR TO FIX THE GREAT BUSH/REPUBLICAN RECESSION!
- Republican Senate Candidate Rep. Mike Castle Takes Credit For Over $5 Million In Stimulus Funds He Voted To Kill
- In KY, Republican Mitch McConnell Brags About Stimulus Projects, Requests More Money; In DC, McConnell Says Stimulus Should End
Republicans Who Opposed The Stimulus Continue To Pan It As A ‘Failure,’ While Also Taking Credit For Its Success
- Republican Jindal Tours Louisiana Attacking ‘Washington Spending’ While Handing Out Jumbo-Sized Stimulus Checks. Jindal takes credit for stimulus, presents constituents with jumbo-sized stimulus check.
- Republican Rep. Shuster Bashes The Stimulus As A Failure While Taking Credit For Its Success
Republicans Who Opposed The Stimulus Line Up To Criticize It Publicly, Request More Money Privately
- Republican Kit Bond Touts Effects Of Stimulus Bill He Voted Against
- All In A Day’s Work: Republican Rep. Kingston Smears The Stimulus On TV, Takes Credit For Stimulus Jobs In His District
The GOP is not interested in productive policy, they are only interested in sabotaging the President's agenda. I'm not sure what good he thinks this meeting with them (GOP) is going to do other than hopefully point out their rank hypocrisy, but so far he's giving way too much deference to the party of "no" that deserves none. The Republicans are more than happy to continue to drive the economy into a ditch if they think it will keep them in office.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/10/maddow-calls-out-individu_n_456645.html
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Posted by: HHH | March 15, 2010 1:01 PM
Mark, check you math again (as teri would tell me)....1 in 4, does not equal 4 in 10...i.e, 25% does not equal 40%, for the middle class. Your title of this article directly conflicts with the first sentence.
Posted by: Xcellentform | March 15, 2010 1:22 PM
OHHHH IT'S TRICKLE HHH SPEWING AGAIN. HOW MANY MORE TRILLION (1,000,000,000,000) WILL IT TAKE, TRICKLE?
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$13 trillion in inches is a lot of miles
Take out a piece of paper and mark out 10 inches. Each inch in our chart will represent 100,000 dollars. This is roughly the equivalent to two years worth of the median household income in the United States. Ten inches, represents one million dollars and therefore about 20 years of family earnings.
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Take your sheet outside and go for a walk. Count your paces. As you walk along occasionally glance at your chart to remind you how "far" one million dollars is. After 278 steps, stop. At typical pacing, one should have walked two complete football fields and almost 80 yards of a third. This distance is the equivalent of one billion dollars.
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We have only begun to get a concept of one trillion dollars. To do this you will need your car, and of course your million dollar paper. Proceed to the nearest freeway and upon arrival, set the trip recorder on your odometer while simultaneously setting your cruise at 60. Take note of the time. As you drive, periodically look at your million dollar chart and at the distance going by. After two hours and 37 minutes, pull over. Your trip meter should be reading approximately 158 miles traveled. This distance represents one trillion dollars. You have over 31 more hours to drive and 1894 more miles to travel to get a concept of the 13 trillion dollars our debt ceiling was just raised to.
Posted by: Bobby Mobbie | March 15, 2010 1:36 PM
Correct, confused the 25 percent of those with college degrees saying they are struggling with the overall number. 4 in 10 is correct for the hed, with thanks for the catch. It's Monday.
Posted by: Mark Silva | March 15, 2010 1:44 PM
Looks like obama's math!
But no worry, I'm sure it's forward looking and the numbers will keep increasing.
under obama and the democrats - I would bet their goal is to have 100% of the country struggling.
high unemployment, raising taxes, ill conceived healthcare bill, coming inflation, dividing the country....obama's awesome!
Posted by: worsethanbefore | March 15, 2010 1:49 PM
Mark,
"worsethanbefore" is another Bobby Mobbie sockpuppet. Will you PLEASE delete that post?
(Silva's reply: "Worse than before" and "Bobby Mobby" are filing from different IP addresses. That's the way we have of identifying individuals. Now, if one person is filing from work and filing from home, not much we can do about that. Trying very much to keep it to single-filings.)
Posted by: HHH | March 15, 2010 1:56 PM
THE REPUBLICAN AG IN VIRGINIA IS A BIRTHER NUT!
Virginia's new REPUBLICAN attorney general Ken Cuccinelli has been wasting no time peddling his far right and religious right attitudes. First it was his order to Virginia's public universities telling them they cannot prevent discrimination against their gay and lesbian employees. Now he's joined the "birthers" - saying in so many words he isn't convinced that the President is a natural-born citizen of the United States.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-3nkQYONic
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Words fail me. The chief legal enforcement officer of the State of Virginia is questioning the legality of any and all actions taken by the President of the United States, using a hare-brained, off-the-wall, thoroughly discredited and debunked piece of garbage as his justification.
At least since Clinton, and possibly since Carter, Republicans have had trouble with the notion than anyone other than a Republican should be allowed to run the country. They never accepted Clinton's legitimacy, and rooted around for years looking for something, anything, that they could use to kick him out of office (since, obviously, the usual route of voting him out of office wasn't going to work), and finally settled on the ludicrous notion of impeaching him for lying about having sex.
Obama is faithful to Michele, so that's not going to work this time. In fact, he is legally so squeaky clean on all counts that it's almost embarrassing. And he got a huge majority in both popular and electoral votes. His invulnerability to any legitimate challenge has driven the Republicans both to distraction and despair, and forced them to come up with insane, off-the-wall, inventions that only a deluded paranoid could possibly conceive of as having any validity.
Which makes the Virginia attorney general either a deluded paranoid, or - more likely - a cynical politician willing to tear the country apart in order to get the votes of deluded right wing paranoids.
Posted by: HHH | March 15, 2010 2:09 PM
TRICKLE HHH AND HIS RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY THEORY . . . . HAHAHAHA! THERE'S A WHOLLLLEEE BUNCH OF US TRICKLE HHH, IF YOU DON'T KNOW NOW, YOU WILL BY THE NOVEMBER ELECTION RESULTS!!!!
Posted by: Bobby Mobbie | March 15, 2010 2:41 PM
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TRICKLE HHH AND HIS RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY THEORY .
Posted by: Bobby Mobbie | March 15, 2010 2:41 PM
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Talking Bumper Sticker,
You're not fooling anyone, you moron.
You're only fooling the system with your computer games.
And by the way, keep getting your hopes up about the elections this fall, I'm going to be the first one on here mocking you and your sock-puppets when you get the devastating news that your Repug team is still the minority.
Posted by: HHH | March 15, 2010 3:12 PM
Thanks for the correction Mark....oh, and "hed" should be head! :P
Anyways, I think an important piece of information that was left off from the ABC article was: 57% & 68% of middle-class and lower-class, respectfully, said that America is in a long term decline.
Funny, that's what I've been saying for 2 years here. Right now, you have a whole lotta America pissed off. This kind of situation didn't fair well for the French elite before their revolution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution Pay special attention to the "Causes" section.
(Silva: sorry, "hed'' is trade talk, old desk lingo for a headline, like the "lede'' of the story. Goes back to the old days when they set the type in lead and the pressroom wasn't to be confused by directions from the newsroom. Dating ourselves here.)
Posted by: Xcellentform | March 15, 2010 3:17 PM
Hey bobby's mommy, if you want to toss financial figures around, and you claim to understand numbers so well, why did the pugs rape this country from 1980 to 2006? http://www.editgrid.com/user/xcellentform/Debt_history_for_congress_and_presidents_2_%281%29
That is over a 1/4 century of pilfering and raping this country....for your knowledge. And this was done by your party, and with the power completely in their favor. If they wanted their mess to stop, they had the numbers to stop it, but guess what.....they were the ones inflicting it.
Posted by: Xcellentform | March 15, 2010 3:42 PM
Of course 4 out of 10 are struggling. With the real unemployment rate at 17.6% what do you expect. Since Obama has taken office we have lost 4.3 million jobs and the federal government has grown by over 100,000 jobs.
Posted by: Crooks_In_DC | March 15, 2010 3:55 PM
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Since Obama has taken office we have lost 4.3 million jobs and the federal government has grown by over 100,000 jobs.
Posted by: Crooks_In_DC | March 15, 2010 3:55 PM
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Clown in DC,
It's going to take more than a year to clean up the economic mess the Bush Republicans made. In fact we're probably going to still be cleaning up the Bush Republicans messes some 30-40 years from now.
"George Bush is leaving the White House with a dismal economic record. By almost every measure — GDP growth, jobs, median incomes, financial-market performance — he stacks up as probably the least-successful President on the economic front since Herbert Hoover."
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http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872229_1872230_1872231,00.html
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Posted by: HHH | March 15, 2010 5:04 PM
Trickled On HoHoH,
Recession is over. All BO has to do is put in policies that will not hamper the economy for creating jobs. Sadly, BO wants to create more crisises that won't go to waste. YOu can refernece the few GOP Congressman that had good things, I'll reference the millions of unemployed that have lost their jobs since the Stimulus was passed and the the tens of millions of the next generation that will have to pay for this fiscal disaster, along with the Obamacare.
Still whining about using multiple names Trickled On HoHoHO John E?
Just how did President Bush create the recession?
Horrible Form,
Glad I can provide you math skills that 13 years of free gov't education didn;t provide. Go back and work on your reading skills.
Posted by: Terry | March 15, 2010 7:29 PM
tickle-me-teri, do you at all find see the irony in having a typo in your post while criticizing my typo? FYI, I type 65 words per minute and typos do happen. You on the other had, probably slog away at 6.5 words per minute and still can't manage to prove a point. Your refusing to acknowledge anything in the spreadsheet that I made will I guess is your answer to refute any of the truth in numbers.
Posted by: Xcellentform | March 15, 2010 9:30 PM
Horrible Form,
I would be the last person to criticize anyone's typing skills. I type 65 words an hour!!! I use the hunt and peck method. While you took typing in school, I took economics. I guess someone has to be a receptionist.
Anyway, the reference to your lack of reading skills was from our on-going conversation of the past few days.
Posted by: Terry | March 15, 2010 10:55 PM
Triple H.
Try to post a link that is not over a year old. This is Obama's economy now. Or have I been right in calling him the child president because he can not take responsibility for what he has done.
Xcellentform
I did look over your mass of a spreadsheet and did find mistakes. Funny how all the mistakes were in favor of the Liberals. And your self righteousness is sickening.
Posted by: Crooks_In_DC | March 16, 2010 3:13 AM
teri, they've been giving typing classes since typewriters were invented, so I can assume you were using papyrus paper when you were doing your economics courses.
crooks, how is my act of acknowledging and fixing mistakes on the spreadsheet "self rightous". If you review the error corrections, you will quickly see that it had no effect on the outcome of the project. I think facts might actually make you MORE bitter.
Posted by: Xcellentform | March 17, 2010 10:50 AM
Horrible Form,
While you were in secretarial school, some of us were studying real courses. How was shorthand course?
Posted by: Terry | March 17, 2010 7:41 PM