Why $250,000 May Not Be Rich

From The Fiscal Times.com:

"THE $250,000 CONUNDRUM 

By most measures, a $250,000 household income is substantial. It is five times the national average, and just 2.9 percent of couples earn that much or more. “For the average person in this country, a $250,000 household income is an unattainably high annual sum – they’ll never see it,” says Roberton Williams, an analyst at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. 

$250,000 is a lot of money – especially if you live in, say Peoria, Illinois. But if you live in or around New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago or Dallas, you’re not rich – you’re simply what’s known as “upper middle class.” It all comes down to cost of living, a metric that is not considered when the Census Bureau of the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates the mean earnings of working Americans. 

The cost of living in New York, for example, is 105.7 percent higher than living in Peoria, according to Salary.com. New York employers make up some of that difference by typically paying 29.9 percent more than employers in Peoria for the same job with the same type of company."

Go read the entire article here: Tax Hikes over 250K End of the Upper Middle Class.  This is why I think if the Bush tax cuts expire for higher income earners they will be reinstated for the Upper Middle Class under some number, perhaps closer to a half million.  {Maybe $350K +}.  To many of the people that are affected by any potential change live in cities with huge Democratic constituencies.  They foot the bills for a lot of politicians and their voices are going to be heard on this.