"The Income Chart That Explains American Politics"

[PSPS]

3. It is still a valid point.

The Census Bureau chart you provided breaks out only by quintile with the top quintile having a median earner income of $90K. Believe it or not, when the term "middle class" was being bandied about in the last presidential election, the figure being used as the "cutoff" for this term was $250K/year for a single-income household or $400K/year for a married couple both working. Pretty whack, no?

When I was a child, it was the norm for a household to consist of a married couple where the man works and the woman stays at home with the kids -- a single income household. And from this single income, the family could afford to buy food, pay a mortgage, buy clothes, take a yearly two-week vacation, buy the occasional new car, send the kids to college, and occasionally go out to eat. It was comfortable but certainly not extravagant.

Accomplishing the same standard of living today would require far more than the $750/week that the middle-quintile income earner makes, hence the need for at least dual incomes (a phenomenon that became the norm with Reagan.)

To see that the top quintile has an average of over 2 earners per household isn't a surprise given that the median earner income for that quintile is $90K which equates to $14,000 in 1970 dollars.