Middle class leaving San Francisco, census says (opens in new tab)

$75k in San Fran isn't upper middle class.

Some areas are going to be more dense with upper middle class than other. Some people are going to earn more than others. If San Fran hadn't stopped itself from growing, it would have plenty of room for both the upper and lower middle class, like Toronto does. Economics isn't a war between the haves and the have nots, it's a manner to allocate resources. We should be focused on increasing production and efficiency, not on making sure everyone in life is equal. That will never happen.

I can tell you that all the people that have moved into my East Bay neighborhood with good schools have been from SF. People with kids that can't handle the price for private schools and deal with the kid unfriendly nature of SF.

$35k is solidly middle class in Japan (corresponds pretty much exactly to the expected income of a salaryman and his wife during their family's formative years) and in wide swathes of the US, particularly non-metro areas. Representative occupations would include, e.g., early-career public school teachers, public servants, car salesmen, police officers, etc, etc.

The American English definition of 'middle class' is bizarre and seems to include anyone who has a job and isn't homeless. The correct English meaning of the word is someone who works for themselves rather than a boss in a profession which has a guild to ensure exclusivity, e.g. doctor or lawyer. Or the owner of a small business which employs other people. It's mostly inherited upon birth and has little to do with income. For example the son of a doctor will be born middle class and will maintain that status even if he becomes a wage labourer working for an employer. After perhaps 20 years of wage labour he may then consider he has fallen into the working class. Similarly someone who wins millions on the lottery will never really be 'upper class' because they weren't born of aristocratic stock, although if they maintain their wealth while avoiding work then their children might be.

The people in Silicon Valley working for others are working class.

You can live middle-classly on 40-60k in most of America still.

Techies seem to be anxious to claim middle-class status, but if you're in a 6-figure household family, you're still pushing upper class compared to nearly anywhere.

And the statistical fact is that if you're $250 k in the US in household income, you are in fact the 1%.

$35K is doing just fine in Cleveland, OH.

As an SF resident, I'm pretty confident that my adopted city has the most dysfunctional municipal government in the country.

The government is elected by the people, so really it's the people to be blamed.

The government can accommodate (or fail to), but most of the driving factors here originate from the private sector.