For a moment the other night, as I was checking e-mail from readers reacting to Sunday's column about John McCain's "class warfare" whine, I lost my perspective. It was a temporary condition, brought on by an armchair economist named Mark who said my characterization of people who make more than $250,000 a year as "wealthy" was inaccurate.
"Can we stop with the notion that a family of four that lives in a major metropolitan area and makes $250,000 a year is wealthy?" wrote Mark, no last name given. "Granted, they are comfortable. But wealthy? After taxes, mortgage, health insurance, cars, gas, college education, food, they are lucky to be able to save anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. I would assume that all rational people would not call that wealthy."
Just what we need - a semantics cop trying to spare those who make a quarter-mil the stigma of being labeled "wealthy." And there were several other reader e-mails blasting me for describing the widening disparity of income levels in the United States over the past 30 years, with the wealthiest Americans, those over the $250,000 level, enjoying the most gains.
For a moment, I questioned the figure Barack Obama has set as the point for new taxes should he become president. But Obama knows that when he mentions $250,000 in a speech or debate, there are relatively few American households that can identify or sympathize with that figure.
Just how many Americans live where the air is rare?
Here's what the U.S. Census Bureau reports, based on its 2007 survey.
Of 116 million American households, 2.24 million had incomes of $250,000 or more. That's fewer than 2 percent of all households, and the highest bracket the Census Bureau tracks. The median income for those households was $418,000.
There were another 2 million households that made between $200,000 and $249,000, and 5.1 million at between $150,000 and $199,000. Neither group would be subject to Obama's tax increase.
The next bracket down the ladder is large, with more than 14 million households earning between $100,000 and $149,000.
The remaining households in the United States earned below $100,000 a year, with about 25 million households at or below what the government considers poverty level income for a family of four, about $21,000 annually.
That leaves about 68 million households with income between $22,000 and $100,000.
