John McCain has suggested that you’re not rich unless you make $5,000,000 per year. This sets the stage for all of those non-rich (less than $5M per year) folks to step up and demand tax relief.
Here’s a recent Newsweek article, though, that shows that if your household income is more than even $250,000 per year, you are . . . well . . . rich.
$250,000 puts you in pretty fancy company. The Census Bureau earlier this week reported that the median household income was $50,223 in 2007—up slightly from the last year but still below the 1999 peak. So a household that earned $250,000 made five times the median. In fact, as this chart shows, only 2.245 million U.S. households, the top 1.9 percent, had income greater than $250,000 in 2007. (About 20 percent of households make more than $100,000.)
I suppose in a similar vein, it could be said that one isn't evil unless one has killed at least 5 million people. Merely killing a few hundred thousand… nope, not at evil, eh?
I wonder what McCain would consider poor. I believe the poverty threshold for in the US in 2007 was just around $10,000 per year. If McCain is overestimating the "richness threshold" by a factor of 20 (using your mentioned figure of $250,000), then perhaps he would similarly underestimate the poverty threshold by the same factor? In that case, one isn't really poor unless one makes less than $500 a year. Interestingly, that may be actually be in line with the poverty standard in some parts of the world, but in the US? Peanuts!
Or… would he instead overestimate the poverty threshold too, such that you're poor if you make less than $200,000 a year? I expect McCain would personally consider himself poor if his wealth suddenly dropped so precipitously, but would he be prepared to extend that standard to everyone?
I do wish a reporter would ask McCain how much one needs to make before one is no longer "poor." HHS indicates that a family of four with an income of more than $21,200 is not poor. http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/08poverty.shtml I have a hard time imagining how families of four can get by on $21,201 per year. It would take a lot of conscious thought about how one's money is going to be spent.