jenk

from an article on "the middle class crunch" by Liz Pulliam Weston:

A decent job is no longer an easy ticket to a middle-class life. It's not just that things like health care and pensions are disappearing; it's that they're disappearing at the same time as our expectations about our lives have risen. [...]

If we define [middle class] solely by income, then according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a household income of $36,000 to $57,657 in 2005 landed you squarely in the middle class. [...] Of course, there are plenty of problems with using income figures, most notably because income alone doesn't reflect the huge variation in living costs across the U.S. [...]

A more flexible definition for middle class would be having the resources to cover all your needs and some of your wants, plus the ability to save for the future.

I think it's telling that she specifies "some of your wants", not "all of your wants" - as she notes a bit later in the article:

[T]rying to look like you're middle class may well doom your prospects to actually be middle class.

Maybe I've watched too much TV, but I know I fall into the "well why can't I have this thing that I want", and don't check how the individual things all add up...