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Michigan Daily columnist Jesse Klein stirred up some feelings with his column this week entitled: "Relative wealth."
The native of Palo Alto, Calif., a columnist for the University of Michigan school newspaper, writes:
My family’s household income is $250,000 a year, but I promise you I am middle class. I live in a $2 million dollar house, but I promise you I am still middle class. It has one story, doesn’t have a pool or its own movie theater. It is a modest three-bedroom, two-bath.
I understand how it sounds to dismiss $250,000. I do not discount that I am from a privileged family that can afford more than just the necessities. Many University students are also from well-off backgrounds. In Fall 2011, 63 percent of the class of 2015 reported a family income of $100,000 or more. But wealth is a relative measure in some respects. Because of the high cost of living in Palo Alto, I grew up middle class and I have found that my views on money sometimes differ drastically from those of in-state students.
The median value of a house in Ann Arbor is $274,400, and Ann Arbor is considered an expensive area of Michigan in which to live. On the few occasions I cross Main Street and enter “real Ann Arbor,” I am taken aback by the size of these houses. Most are two stories with a basement and attic and have large front and back yards. The average house price in Palo Alto is $2.3 million and none are two stories. If you want a two-story house, you better have another million to spend. To put it simply, my house in Ann Arbor is bigger than my house at home.
Housing prices aren’t the only discrepancy. A 64-ounce fishbowl at Good Time Charley’s costs about the same as an 8-ounce Long Island anywhere in the Bay Area.
So even though I have money, I don’t relate to a lot of people here who do. California money is earned and spent in a very different way than a lot of the wealthy families in the Midwest or other parts of the country. It’s almost Gatsby-like. California money is new money, held by software nerds. They don’t dress in suits but in bad dad jeans and fanny packs. Money elsewhere in the country usually means suits and ties and generations of family holdings.
Michigan Daily columnist Jenny Wang responded, writing:
I am among the minority whose family does not earn $100,000 or more a year. I am also an Ann Arbor native.
Before she got laid off, my mother was earning about $30,000 a year. She is currently making an inconsistent $900 a month, without benefits.
She goes on to write:
Until I wrote this piece, I have very purposefully steered clear of discussing my low socioeconomic status. I have, since coming to Michigan, come to embrace my status as a woman, as a person of color, etc. But I have never felt that I could fit in with my peers because of my SES. It’s a part of me that makes me feel, in a strange way, ashamed. I will not forget the day my mother opened the mail and found an anonymous check of $200 to help us pay for the bills; she broke down in front of me in shame, and I felt completely worthless because there was nothing else we could do — we had no other option of paying for our utilities than to accept this generous donation.
Erica Watson · University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, wrote in the comment section of Jesse Klein's column:
So many thoughts.
1. lolololololololololol this a joke, right?
2. What is the thesis for this article? Seriously, what was the point of writing this?
Do you want sympathy for not feeling rich enough? Do you want to prove that you're not privileged so you can feel better about how rich you are? Some people at this university don't even know if their parents can even afford the house they RENT next month. Should I call them up and tell them, "don't worry, you can be considered middle class", just like Jesse Klein, because middle class is " 'a varied group of people!'"
2. You can promise me a lot of things that aren't true, including being middle class. If you live in a 2 MILLION dollar home, you are NOT middle class. That is more than my family will likely make IN THEIR LIFETIME. Just because your family chose to live in an area so wealthy that you can "only afford a modest three bedroom house" is not anyone's problem. You could have lived anywhere you wanted in the U.S. The fact that you even had that choice shows you aren't middle class.
3. Am I supposed to be impressed that simply because you spent so much time around rich people who were so rich they didn't even feel the need to show off how rich they were with name brands because they were in an area where it could only be assumed they could afford whatever they wanted?
Reader Mark Montgomery wrote of Klein's column:
...at first glance, I was sure this column was satire.
