The American middle class lags behind European countries with strong social safety nets

[TexasTiger 12,800]

Pretty significant disparities:

 

Pew Research Center‏ @pewresearch

% of adults in middle class: Denmark 80% France 74% Germany 72% Italy 67% UK 67% Spain 64% U.S. 59%

[triangletiger 1,599]

How is 'middle class' defined?

[AUDub 11,131]

1 hour ago, triangletiger said:

How is 'middle class' defined?

[AU64 10,122]

Despite the charts, it's hard for me to assess what is "middle class". 

I traveled in Europe regularly during my working days, visiting my Swiss employer and some customers and suppliers.   Got to know a number of people and seems that my counterparts who were also considered middle class had very different lives and lifestyles.     Aside from the cost of basic consumables which were substantially higher thanks to the VAT , most of my associates lived in apartments or town home type communities which were quite nice but much smaller than what I think of as "middle class" housing.  Taxes were higher and they had less discretionary income.....less as a percent of their total income I guess.  It was hard to judge all that the government provided because the company paid their health insurance...but the roads in just about every place I went were far superior to ours, well kept schools and mostly reliable public transit which was not free but not overly expensive. 

Most telling to me however, was when a person was sent over to the US from Europe on a short term (up to a couple years) assignment, they almost never went back to their home country once they had a 3000 SF home in the suburbs and a couple full size cars.    Also,  a neighbor who was a native Dane who came to the US in his 20s to work with a textile manufacturer in research...was here about 10 years and got frustrated with his boss over something and pulled up stakes and took his family back to Denmark to open a machining business.  In about a year I ran into him back in the US...said he had moved back...that the Danes drove him crazy and it was impossible to do business over there because of the government.   Guess the grass is not always greener on the other side..

Statistics are interesting and even telling I guess....but hands on experience is hard to beat.

[TexasTiger 12,800]

9 minutes ago, AU64 said:

Despite the charts, it's hard for me to assess what is "middle class". 

I traveled in Europe regularly during my working days, visiting my Swiss employer and some customers and suppliers.   Got to know a number of people and seems that my counterparts who were also considered middle class had very different lives and lifestyles.     Aside from the cost of basic consumables which were substantially higher thanks to the VAT , most of my associates lived in apartments or town home type communities which were quite nice but much smaller than what I think of as "middle class" housing.  Taxes were higher and they had less discretionary income.....less as a percent of their total income I guess.  It was hard to judge all that the government provided because the company paid their health insurance...but the roads in just about every place I went were far superior to ours, well kept schools and mostly reliable public transit which was not free but not overly expensive. 

Most telling to me however, was when a person was sent over to the US from Europe on a short term (up to a couple years) assignment, they almost never went back to their home country once they had a 3000 SF home in the suburbs and a couple full size cars.    Also,  a neighbor who was a native Dane who came to the US in his 20s to work with a textile manufacturer in research...was here about 10 years and got frustrated with his boss over something and pulled up stakes and took his family back to Denmark to open a machining business.  In about a year I ran into him back in the US...said he had moved back...that the Danes drove him crazy and it was impossible to do business over there because of the government.   Guess the grass is not always greener on the other side..

Statistics are interesting and even telling I guess....but hands on experience is hard to beat.

Anecdotal experience is also wildly variable.

[AU64 10,122]

True...so from these statistics what do we know about the life of a design engineer living  in Tobel, Switzerland or Gera, Germany?  

Statistics are interesting but in my view at least, unless you also have some anecdotal information the numbers don't tell you much. Sure it varies but there is also a randomness about the sample that might make it useful.  

[homersapien 11,352]

Seriously, we should compare countries using anecdotes?!

Good grief.

[triangletiger 1,599]

On ‎4‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 2:51 PM, Bigbens42 said:

Those are pretty wide ranges.  There's a lot of difference in the lifestyle of someone making $35,000 per year and someone making $100,000 per year (at least if all other variables, such as cost-of-living, are equal).  Just based on that Pew Research chart,  it appears that middle class may be defined based on how much of a person's/household's income is disposable.  This could be calculated in either %-age of total income or in actual dollars.  Of course, that will vary widely depending the cost-of-living in a particular area.  Also, in areas with a low cost-of-living (such as rural areas in the southern U.S.), the disposable income would also be 'worth more'.