The $150,000 household thinking it's under threat from wealth inequality policy is engineered confusion, not organic anxiety. The iconic example of this has always been the estate tax. Virtually nobody at $150,000 will ever owe a dollar, but the wealth defense industry has spent decades marketing the estate tax as a threat to "family farms" and "family businesses" and they have been so effective that families nowhere near the threshold are scared to death of the tax. People making $150k may have privileges but they folding them into the wealth conversation is disingenuous. The question is whether it is intentionally so!
oh, also, Sterling Point was great! A lot of unaddressed inheritance problems, but that's okay.
Depends on your state. In MN, the state level estate tax exemption is 3M. In Oregon it’s 1M. Many frugal retirees accumulate that much wealth before they die.
Absolutely not the point here but “Gavin Newsom—a man who looks like an AI-generated response to a prompt for American Politician™️” is way too accurate.
The flattening isn't a failure of analysis. It's the product. The Daily sells a listener profile to advertisers, and that profile sits closer to $150,000 than to the median worker. Calling that household 'high-income' and its hesitancy rational keeps the audience on the outside of the story, which is where the subscription stays.
*repeatedly bashes head against wall* it blows my smooth brain that literally anyone with a household income of $150k would feel ambiguous about wealth redistribution or confusion about their empathy with the actual rich. The NYT analysis just seems so out of touch with reality. We’re DINKWADs in this income range and I feel way closer to being poor than to being rich. Living in a HCOL area definitely furthers this sentiment.
Katie I love that you called out the amount of people who had eyes on this analysis - no way it’s just a factual error. Now I’m wondering what conspiracy theories anyone has about why the NYT would want to rationalize middle income people identifying with the upper class. Plz tell if you have any thx
Greetings from Michigan! The median income for our Detroit suburban city (population 11,000) is $124,000. In the primary earlier this month, 4267 votes were cast for US Senator. 1958 were for Al-Sayed, 1246 for Stevens, and 824 for Rogers (GOP).
We live in an area with a great deal of inherited and earned wealth (car company heirs, Lions players) but also close to Detroit, where 30% of residents are below the poverty line. I'd say my neighbors can look one direction and feel very middle class, or look another way and feel wealthy. But I'd guess that most of my neighbors feel pretty middle class and are not threatened by wealth equality.
Thank you for this observation. It feels very true that Dems like to control what isn't in their control. Now if they could just focus on helping their constituents live better lives without being controlled by corporations and pacs...
Depending on the context, we $150K/year households are the super-rich. Compare yourself to any Third-World country, and count your blessings. When the DSA attacks "the rich" and promises endless "free" stuff, anyone with basic math skills knows we are the inevitable target, as the line of demarcation shifts ever downward. DSA grievences are correct. Their proposed solutions are not.
Vast majority of $150/K households in US rely entirely on a paycheck. If main earner loses their job/has a major medical crisis, that security can disappear instantly. In pretty much any major city, most of that paycheck goes right to rent, mortgage, childcare (if you have kids), and healthcare.
DSA proposals aren't coming for people living off a salary; they're targeting billionaire class/mega corporations who accumulate wealth passively through stocks/assets/real estate and who most often pay a lower effective tax rate than low six-figure-earning households.
Universal programs like guaranteed healthcare (which every other OECD country has) and subsidized childcare aren't "free stuff" they're public services that would replace giant private insurance deductibles and tuition bills and leave families in $150/K year range more money in their pockets.
As someone from the said third- world countries, a war zone in fact , we look at your Healthcare and housing system in the US and we count our blessings, also your “far left” is center right at many countries. DSA isn't ambitious enough
Not sure why we'd want to compare ourselves to poorer countries when we could be looking up to countries with strong social safety nets, housing, and universal healthcare, and where a single spouse losing their $75k job doesn't mean a battle for survival.
I am curious if these 150K+ household's in these locations feel like they are upper middle class / high income in comparison to their regional neighbors. I wonder if that information exists. I suppose we don't know how these voters feel about themselves.
This reminds me of Morgan Housel's examples of people wanting to feel better/richer than others they can easily compare themselves with, maybe they do feel like they are quite high income in comparison to their poorer community despite where they exist statistically. Or maybe the podcasters are just talking nonsense and grasping for reasons after the fact.
I’m in a 150k+ household (DINKWADS) in California, and I still can’t afford to buy a house in this state, so no we do not feel rich. We purposely moved to a lower cost of living area in hopes that one day we can buy one but every time I do the math, it doesn’t make sense. Our monthly expenses would double overnight if we chose to buy instead of rent with the cost of insurance, property taxes, repairs, etc.
I would be surprised if 150K anywhere in California made one feel "high income", maybe there are rural communities, but I'd doubt it. The subjects of the piece were in the midwest so one could imagine that it *might* be possible for them to feel upper income, but we still don't know how they felt about themselves. Just what NPR ascribed to them.
As for owning a home, that's not surprising, it's far better financially to rent than to own. Renting is cheaper than buying in all the top 50 metro areas within the US and in Canada too. There are plenty of reasons to own a home, but cost savings isn't one of them. But most readers probably know that.
Personally, I don't understand America's obsession with ownership, especially as it's such a poor return. Home ownership is essentially a luxury purchase, the question is should it be?
Housing affordablity is a great concern, but I'm not sure why that should mean ownership as opposed to affordable renting, and renting is so much more affordable, but maybe/likely it's not affordable enough.
Either way, I would hope we all are able to achieve the aspirations we aspire to, and that there is a real path to get there. Whether that's home ownership or a pink porsche or whatever, I'd hate for us to say as a culture that some dreams are only for some people.
That would suck and it feels antithetical to American Mythology.
In the upper Midwest of Wisconsin and Michigan, a household income of $150k is pretty firmly middle income/middle class, though people can easily talk themselves into thinking it’s more. I grew up in Wisconsin, and 10 years ago when I lived there a $150k household income looked like a nice 4br house, a few kids, 1 working parent, maybe a vacation a couple times a year. As someone whose parents made markedly *less* than that, my peers in that bracket seemed well off, but by no means rich. Often times hanging by an unseen financial thread. Property prices have gone up significantly in these places (as everywhere else) since 2020, so today a $150k household income would do far less for you.
We don’t know if 150k income households are pro or anti billionaires because we are not rational in our financial choices, nor are we transparent about reporting of generational or cross border wealth. Talking about what we truly earn, have, and want to earn and have are considered incredibly private, even taboo. This is what allows the Daily to sweep the “middle class” into “protect the wealthy” demographic without thinking too much about it.
Anecdotal evidence of this opacity: I saw an article confidently declaring that the average net worth of an American in her forties was less than 500k. This was from a large sample data from Fidelity based on their customers’ portfolios. What they failed to include as a caveat is that most people when they switch companies, they are forced to switch their brokerage firm (e.g., Fidelity to Vanguard). I have retirement accounts in 3 different firms because I never bothered to consolidate them.
I’m not declaring that families earning 150k are pro billionaires because they all have some secret wealth. What I am saying is that people are not rational actors with complete information when it comes to wealth (and the fact that this is the ENTIRE premise of modern economics is the reason why I could never get into it despite my very own economics degree).
democrats have no idea who votes for them and they certainly don't understand what income means. they are letting the magats decide who they are and the times spews like it's 1970.
About footnote 1: I know there has been talk about the length of podcasts as far back as the mid to late 2000s, when they got their name because they would be sent to you by RSS feed to download, then uploaded into an iPod. Multiples of 20 minute periods just seemed to work best for some reason, probably because of commutes.
It's interesting to see later market research backing that idea.
Agree with enjoying Sterling Point!! Annie is so dang lovable.
Also, as a DINK with a household income of ~$130,000 in Alabama (a place where that should go super far), I know that I'm doing well financially, but also that would fundamentally change if we were to have children any time soon. I do not know how anyone in other parts of the country could feel "high-income" at $150k without some serious propagandizing.
I love that you pointed this out about The Daily and that you went down that rabbit hole to explain why Cohn's blithe remark was so awful (I hope you sent them your analysis!). I often go crazy listening to The Daily. ONE small quibble with your analysis: I'm not sure it's worth trying to put $150K in the middle of the income distribution. It's closer to the 60th or 70th decile (in 2025), but what's also important for the upper middle deciles is that they end up paying the highest share of taxes. Beyond the 95th decile is where the crazy wealth is that progressives want to tax (i.e. those who don't pay their share of taxes), and the upper middle income group should be applauding that since they pay disproportionately more than those very rich. Anyway, hope that makes sense. I love all your takes and your podcast!
In Wisconsin, the current governor, who is pretty beloved, endorsed the candidate who went on to win the primary. I think those voters are looking for a sure thing.
👏👏👏 A really good example of general media not understanding how our culture of money is woven into everything they report on. Any reporting on the viability of socialist candidates should include the deeper conversations about class and the economy that you mentioned, but reporters outside of personal finance can’t seem to connect their mention of income statistics to people’s actual experiences with money.
The $150,000 household thinking it's under threat from wealth inequality policy is engineered confusion, not organic anxiety. The iconic example of this has always been the estate tax. Virtually nobody at $150,000 will ever owe a dollar, but the wealth defense industry has spent decades marketing the estate tax as a threat to "family farms" and "family businesses" and they have been so effective that families nowhere near the threshold are scared to death of the tax. People making $150k may have privileges but they folding them into the wealth conversation is disingenuous. The question is whether it is intentionally so!
oh, also, Sterling Point was great! A lot of unaddressed inheritance problems, but that's okay.
Fun to see you here, Prof Tait! I was in your Wills class at UR back in 2013. Congrats on your book!
Amazing! Thanks for saying hi and hope all is well! Love the connection on Substack :)
Depends on your state. In MN, the state level estate tax exemption is 3M. In Oregon it’s 1M. Many frugal retirees accumulate that much wealth before they die.
Absolutely not the point here but “Gavin Newsom—a man who looks like an AI-generated response to a prompt for American Politician™️” is way too accurate.
The flattening isn't a failure of analysis. It's the product. The Daily sells a listener profile to advertisers, and that profile sits closer to $150,000 than to the median worker. Calling that household 'high-income' and its hesitancy rational keeps the audience on the outside of the story, which is where the subscription stays.
*repeatedly bashes head against wall* it blows my smooth brain that literally anyone with a household income of $150k would feel ambiguous about wealth redistribution or confusion about their empathy with the actual rich. The NYT analysis just seems so out of touch with reality. We’re DINKWADs in this income range and I feel way closer to being poor than to being rich. Living in a HCOL area definitely furthers this sentiment.
Katie I love that you called out the amount of people who had eyes on this analysis - no way it’s just a factual error. Now I’m wondering what conspiracy theories anyone has about why the NYT would want to rationalize middle income people identifying with the upper class. Plz tell if you have any thx
Greetings from Michigan! The median income for our Detroit suburban city (population 11,000) is $124,000. In the primary earlier this month, 4267 votes were cast for US Senator. 1958 were for Al-Sayed, 1246 for Stevens, and 824 for Rogers (GOP).
We live in an area with a great deal of inherited and earned wealth (car company heirs, Lions players) but also close to Detroit, where 30% of residents are below the poverty line. I'd say my neighbors can look one direction and feel very middle class, or look another way and feel wealthy. But I'd guess that most of my neighbors feel pretty middle class and are not threatened by wealth equality.
Thank you for this observation. It feels very true that Dems like to control what isn't in their control. Now if they could just focus on helping their constituents live better lives without being controlled by corporations and pacs...
Depending on the context, we $150K/year households are the super-rich. Compare yourself to any Third-World country, and count your blessings. When the DSA attacks "the rich" and promises endless "free" stuff, anyone with basic math skills knows we are the inevitable target, as the line of demarcation shifts ever downward. DSA grievences are correct. Their proposed solutions are not.
Vast majority of $150/K households in US rely entirely on a paycheck. If main earner loses their job/has a major medical crisis, that security can disappear instantly. In pretty much any major city, most of that paycheck goes right to rent, mortgage, childcare (if you have kids), and healthcare.
DSA proposals aren't coming for people living off a salary; they're targeting billionaire class/mega corporations who accumulate wealth passively through stocks/assets/real estate and who most often pay a lower effective tax rate than low six-figure-earning households.
Universal programs like guaranteed healthcare (which every other OECD country has) and subsidized childcare aren't "free stuff" they're public services that would replace giant private insurance deductibles and tuition bills and leave families in $150/K year range more money in their pockets.
As someone from the said third- world countries, a war zone in fact , we look at your Healthcare and housing system in the US and we count our blessings, also your “far left” is center right at many countries. DSA isn't ambitious enough
Not sure why we'd want to compare ourselves to poorer countries when we could be looking up to countries with strong social safety nets, housing, and universal healthcare, and where a single spouse losing their $75k job doesn't mean a battle for survival.
I am curious if these 150K+ household's in these locations feel like they are upper middle class / high income in comparison to their regional neighbors. I wonder if that information exists. I suppose we don't know how these voters feel about themselves.
This reminds me of Morgan Housel's examples of people wanting to feel better/richer than others they can easily compare themselves with, maybe they do feel like they are quite high income in comparison to their poorer community despite where they exist statistically. Or maybe the podcasters are just talking nonsense and grasping for reasons after the fact.
I’m in a 150k+ household (DINKWADS) in California, and I still can’t afford to buy a house in this state, so no we do not feel rich. We purposely moved to a lower cost of living area in hopes that one day we can buy one but every time I do the math, it doesn’t make sense. Our monthly expenses would double overnight if we chose to buy instead of rent with the cost of insurance, property taxes, repairs, etc.
I would be surprised if 150K anywhere in California made one feel "high income", maybe there are rural communities, but I'd doubt it. The subjects of the piece were in the midwest so one could imagine that it *might* be possible for them to feel upper income, but we still don't know how they felt about themselves. Just what NPR ascribed to them.
As for owning a home, that's not surprising, it's far better financially to rent than to own. Renting is cheaper than buying in all the top 50 metro areas within the US and in Canada too. There are plenty of reasons to own a home, but cost savings isn't one of them. But most readers probably know that.
Personally, I don't understand America's obsession with ownership, especially as it's such a poor return. Home ownership is essentially a luxury purchase, the question is should it be?
Housing affordablity is a great concern, but I'm not sure why that should mean ownership as opposed to affordable renting, and renting is so much more affordable, but maybe/likely it's not affordable enough.
Either way, I would hope we all are able to achieve the aspirations we aspire to, and that there is a real path to get there. Whether that's home ownership or a pink porsche or whatever, I'd hate for us to say as a culture that some dreams are only for some people.
That would suck and it feels antithetical to American Mythology.
In the upper Midwest of Wisconsin and Michigan, a household income of $150k is pretty firmly middle income/middle class, though people can easily talk themselves into thinking it’s more. I grew up in Wisconsin, and 10 years ago when I lived there a $150k household income looked like a nice 4br house, a few kids, 1 working parent, maybe a vacation a couple times a year. As someone whose parents made markedly *less* than that, my peers in that bracket seemed well off, but by no means rich. Often times hanging by an unseen financial thread. Property prices have gone up significantly in these places (as everywhere else) since 2020, so today a $150k household income would do far less for you.
every wednesday i look forward to your insightful commentary. thank you.
We don’t know if 150k income households are pro or anti billionaires because we are not rational in our financial choices, nor are we transparent about reporting of generational or cross border wealth. Talking about what we truly earn, have, and want to earn and have are considered incredibly private, even taboo. This is what allows the Daily to sweep the “middle class” into “protect the wealthy” demographic without thinking too much about it.
Anecdotal evidence of this opacity: I saw an article confidently declaring that the average net worth of an American in her forties was less than 500k. This was from a large sample data from Fidelity based on their customers’ portfolios. What they failed to include as a caveat is that most people when they switch companies, they are forced to switch their brokerage firm (e.g., Fidelity to Vanguard). I have retirement accounts in 3 different firms because I never bothered to consolidate them.
I’m not declaring that families earning 150k are pro billionaires because they all have some secret wealth. What I am saying is that people are not rational actors with complete information when it comes to wealth (and the fact that this is the ENTIRE premise of modern economics is the reason why I could never get into it despite my very own economics degree).
democrats have no idea who votes for them and they certainly don't understand what income means. they are letting the magats decide who they are and the times spews like it's 1970.
About footnote 1: I know there has been talk about the length of podcasts as far back as the mid to late 2000s, when they got their name because they would be sent to you by RSS feed to download, then uploaded into an iPod. Multiples of 20 minute periods just seemed to work best for some reason, probably because of commutes.
It's interesting to see later market research backing that idea.
Agree with enjoying Sterling Point!! Annie is so dang lovable.
Also, as a DINK with a household income of ~$130,000 in Alabama (a place where that should go super far), I know that I'm doing well financially, but also that would fundamentally change if we were to have children any time soon. I do not know how anyone in other parts of the country could feel "high-income" at $150k without some serious propagandizing.
I love that you pointed this out about The Daily and that you went down that rabbit hole to explain why Cohn's blithe remark was so awful (I hope you sent them your analysis!). I often go crazy listening to The Daily. ONE small quibble with your analysis: I'm not sure it's worth trying to put $150K in the middle of the income distribution. It's closer to the 60th or 70th decile (in 2025), but what's also important for the upper middle deciles is that they end up paying the highest share of taxes. Beyond the 95th decile is where the crazy wealth is that progressives want to tax (i.e. those who don't pay their share of taxes), and the upper middle income group should be applauding that since they pay disproportionately more than those very rich. Anyway, hope that makes sense. I love all your takes and your podcast!
In Wisconsin, the current governor, who is pretty beloved, endorsed the candidate who went on to win the primary. I think those voters are looking for a sure thing.
👏👏👏 A really good example of general media not understanding how our culture of money is woven into everything they report on. Any reporting on the viability of socialist candidates should include the deeper conversations about class and the economy that you mentioned, but reporters outside of personal finance can’t seem to connect their mention of income statistics to people’s actual experiences with money.