Finance & Economy  What Does 'Middle Class' Really Mean?  NPR’s
Kimberly Jones asks, what does it really mean to be middle class
in America? iStock Photography  Kimberly Jones, here. I’m the
broadcast recording engineer for Tell Me More. This week, as
part of a new series called Living In the Middle, NPR takes a
closer look at what it really means to be middle class in the
U.S.  I’m somewhere in the center of the middle. Or maybe, I’m
on the high side.  Then again, if I lived in an expensive real
estate market, I’d be on the low end of the spectrum.  Perhaps
my confusion about where I fit in the middle-class spectrum is
because the term middle class is such an ambiguous one.  The
Census Bureau’s new figure of $50,000 as the median household
income in the United States is practically meaningless to me.  I
suppose it suggests that if your salary is at least $50K, you're
middle class?  The only thing that figure tells me is that half
of American households earn less than $50K, and half earn more.
But the real si