Critics of Mitt Romney laughed when he said that “middle-class income” was “between $200,000 and $250,000” when what he actually said was that it was “between $200,000 and $250,000 or less” meaning that the $200,000 to $250,000 was the upper limit. As the Huffington Post points out, Democrats including Obama and Pelosi have also used that definition. Of course, both Romney and Obama have incomes well above that amount.
But all of these views are wrong, because classes such as middle class are not defined by income. As Michael Zweig writes in The Working Class Majority, “just looking at a person’s income doesn’t tell us anything about how the person got the income, what role he or she plays in society, how he or she is connected to the power grid of class relations.”
What Romney, Obama, and the various pundits are referring to is middle income, not middle class. As only 16 percent of U.S. households earn more than $100,000 a year, and only 4 percent more than $200,000, the upper limit for middle income is probably much lower than $200,000. But I suspect Romney stated it the way he did to preserve the claim that he has no desire to raise taxes on anyone below that limit.
