working class

[joanna bujes]

At 01:14 AM 06/29/2002 -0400, Brad wrote:
>Let me enunciate as gospel the rule-of-thumb that Bob Litan and I
>agreed on: that more than 3 times your current consumption level
>strikes you as absurd and wasteful luxury. The median family income
>in America today is going to be about $54,000 this year. Taking a
>rough guess at the progressiveness of the tax code, you would need an
>income of about $220,000 to get you to the point where, from the
>perspective of the median, you are starting to buy stupid and
>pointless luxuries that nobody really needs... That gets you down to
>2% of families in the upper class.

This is an honest question: why distinguish on the basis of luxuries? Why 
not distinguish on the basis of whether one has to work for one's living or 
not? In some families, two earners can pull in 220,000 but, depending on 
how extended they are, they could be a month away from the sidewalk. Others 
(who have capital) also have the same income without ever having to work a 
day in their life. Granted, both cases depend upon the same economic 
system, yet it makes more sense to me to put the first family in the 
working class and the second in the capitalist class.

I am not trained in economics, so please, why not slice it and dice it this 
way? Is it for a substantial economic reason? or for a political reason?

Joanna