Some areas, 250k (for a family) is considered lower middle class.
Very true. But it doesn't matter.
Obama and his team were masterful in playing up the "Class Warfare" card.
Mao and Lenin would be proud and I'm not saying that he's a communist or anything but this is how politics works, now and in the past.
I'm still waiting for a bunch of rich people from the "Rich" part of town to get dragged in chains to the local park to face a "trial", get thrown into jail, executed and their property redistributed.
I'm half joking but again, that angle worked.
"Private jets"
"Millionaires and billionaires"
"Fair share"
"The most fortunate"
"Pay a little bit more"
Of course, the 250k per year crowd doesn't own any jets, but whatever. And of course those taxes won't come close to solving the problem or problems we face, but whatever. The beast needs to be fed and the masses need bread and circus.
Another little secret is that t the vast majority of the income gains in real terms and compared to the bottom 90% comes from investments etc. The rise in incomes for the upper strata mirrors, almost perfectly, the rise in the markets over the last 30 years. Go search for some charts, it's striking.