It is so not lower middle class in California. While the couple earning that in the Bay Area may be doing it hard, the difference between that and the lifestyl

It is so not lower middle class in California. While the couple earning that in the Bay Area may be doing it hard, the difference between that and the lifestyle of the poor is immense. There is a fairly thick layer (my bet is at least 35% of the population) of middle class people between your Californians on $125k and hopelessly hardscrabble folk on the breadline. Edit: it looks like it might be a little higher percentage, actually, if we extrapolate from old data from the 2000 census http://ccsre.stanford.edu/reports/report_13.pdf http://ccsre.stanford.edu/reports/report_13.pdf