The BLS (see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm ) says the median hourly wage in May 2011 is $16.57 across al

The BLS (see http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm ) says the median hourly wage in May 2011 is $16.57 across all occupations (mean hourly is $21.74). That fact should help put things in better perspective. Assuming $20/hr as a good ballpark figure for most working people, that would mean working 12500 hours to gross $250000 in a year. Clearly one person couldn't possibly do all that; so in a double-income household that's really only 6250 hours each. That's a 17 hour workday, taking no days off. Unless they really insist on having a day off every so often, in which case that'll be 20 hours a workday. In all seriousness, if it's a power-couple pulling in $250k gross annually, that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $60/hr for each of their jobs, which is about three times the median overall, and more than what the "median" scientist or engineer makes (per BLS stats). According to BLS, median wages are over $50/hr for these occupations: doctors, psychiatrists, Chief Executives, dentists, Petroleum Engineers, senior managers, judges, magistrates, Air Traffic Controllers, pharmacists, lawyers, and physicists. The median for "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" overall is about $36/hr. So who are among the roughly $20/hr crowd? They would include (within median wages $18 thru $22): Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers, Museum Technicians and Conservators, Credit Counselors, Statistical Assistants, Mental Health Counselors, Machinists, Carpenters, Surgical Technologists, Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses, Sheet Metal Workers, Interpreters and Translators, Medical Equipment Repairers, Firefighters, and Structural Iron/Steel Workers, etc. These occupations sound like middle-class lifestyles to me. Assuming a two-income household, each working 1800 hours at $20/hr, the annual household income is $72000 gross (hopefully with benefits). And there you go, a fairly objective definition of a middle-class family, of about $70k a year. To anyone blessed with over $200k/yr, just consider you're really at a place where you could buy - lock, stock, and barrel! - the sort of residence the $70k/yr live in every few years. Really! Just cut back on your extravagances, and you could own a fine middle-class home outright in five years or less. The $70k/yr folks may take decades to achieve the same. This is not to say you shouldn't enjoy, or that you haven't earned, your success - nothing of the sort. It's just that nobody really believes that someone who has the means to own a nice home in rather short time is middle-class too.