Originally Posted by Unregistered

I think we used middle class households to mean middle income households. For young countries like ours, it makes no difference to switch between the two. But for European countries where they have a long history of royalties and the upper classes, there is a difference between what you are born into and what you earn.

For many of the upper class in these countries, they may not even have earned income. They get their "incomes" from their inheritance and investments.

Back to income banding, the middle income band is actually very wide. In the US, it can mean a household income from US$50K to US$300k pa. Likewise in Singapore, the middle income household could be one earning S$60K to S$500K pa.

We are indignant when someone who earns S$250k pa tells us he is just average. Actually he is not wrong. There is a study that shows that people of a certain income class tended to congregate together, ie stay in the same neighbourhood. It is a natural phenomenon occurring everywhere in the world. Thats why you have rich neighbourhoods and poor neighbourhoods.

So for a "rich" guy staying in a rich neighbourhood, he look around him and see that everyone around him has the same thing. Maybe he is staying in a condo. He sees that his neighbour also has a car or two, goes for annual overseas vacation, has a maid etc..

So to him, he sees himself as average.