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Originally Posted by pauldenton
hmm - i'd love to see your evidence for this (unless your use of "middle class" is different from ours......)
in particular:
a) just how many foreign holidays does the average poor person in the US enjoy each year? - (and how long.....) 
b) how many hours of domestic service can they expect to have done for them by paid employees each week? (cleaners, nannies, au pairs etc.)
c) can they expect to put their children through private education for their whole school careers? - or just up to 16?? |
A little digging shows that the UK's median household income is 21,700 pounds/year. (I picked this up from a secondary source, a Guardian article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/s...51551,00.html).
The PPP for various nations is available at the IMF. The PPP rates I used were linked from the wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity . The UK's PPP rate is shown as 0.685.
This means that the UK has a PPP median household income of $31,700, compared to a US median household income of $43,500 (in 2003,
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/incom...statemhi.html).
That means the US median household income is about 35%-40% greater than that of the UK. By most accounts the UK is the wealthiest of the major European countries, so comparisions to other European nations are likely to be even less flattering.
So at 31,700 USD median household income(middle class) your hiring maids and nanny's for the kid's, plus send their kids through private school, paying a mortgage etc. seems unlikely to me.
As an equalizer many poor in the US can get daycare subsidzed ($10 to 15K annually per child in my state) Plus many options for collage for the poor - scholarlships etc.
middle class generally pays their own way.
Vacations , well that's a national choice or preference
Do not take this personal I love the UK -