"the rich define the rich"

200k per year is middle class? the fact that teevee people can say that with a straight face is part of what's wrong with this county

YOUR WORLD IN CHARTS: THE RICH DEFINE THE RICH.

One of the more interesting subthemes of this election has been the elite political class's struggle to sync its understanding of the economy -- based around well-educated people who live in New York or DC -- with the national income distribution. Charlie Gibson, for instance, thinks families making $200,000 are "middle class," hence redefining the middle class as the 97th percentile of the income distribution. Just ordinary investment bankers, struggling to make ends meet. On Saturday night, at Saddleback Church, Barack Obama and John McCain were asked what income level made someone rich (give Rick Warren his due: This was one of the campaign's more useful forum queries). Obama said $150,000, which is somewhere around the 94th percentile. John McCain said $5 million, which is about $3.4 million more per year than you need to qualify for the top 0.1 percentile.