Yeah, that's more than your threshold.

Mississippi's middle class threshold is higher than $25K. See chart. And for a family of four, this is still above the actual poverty rate.

There is no state on this list where $25K is considered middle class.

If you think this is poor, then I don't think you know what poor actually looks like.

I want to define middle class as the class in the middle.

That literally makes no sense.

I meant vacations have gotten more profligate, not that they didn't exist.

Reading the comments, I think that the main issue here is relative income, not absolute income. A family in the 1950's would think that our basic expectations are extremely profligate. Aside from the technological advances that have improved our lives, that was a period where parents didn't expect their kids to go to…

Eating out and vacations were never a big part of being middle class. Remember your parents loading you in the car for a road trip for vacation? Why do you think that was?

Since this is a band surrounding to the median, I assume some went up and some went down...

Do you actually live in Michigan?

How many times have you eaten out this month? I'm including lunch. How many times have you gone out with friends? What type of clothes do you own?

Exactly.

We live far better than we did in the 50's. We live longer, we have better healthcare, we have meat at every meal if we want it, technology has provided use with luxuries that we would have never dreamed of...I think that the illusion is what you think the 50's looked like.

What do you think it should be? The entire bottom half of the country?

Moral hazard.

Depends. Are you kind of a dick?

Shit, I'm screwed then, and I'm straight.

Natural news = crazy person.

Fair enough. It does seem like music has moved on to some degree.