How do Democrats do amongst those making over $400,000?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Obama's cutoff was 250k

Okay?

It's just interesting that the Democrats' cut-off for what makes somebody rich enough to pay more taxes went from $250k to $400k in the past 10 years.  It couldn't be because high-earning professionals are now mostly a Democratic constituency, could it?

I mean 250k in 2012 is worth around 338k today and housing wasn’t anywhere near as expensive in those days

A family making $250k/yr is in the 92nd percentile of households in the U.S.  If you can't afford a mortgage on that salary, it's not housing prices that are your problem. 

And how much would it have been in 2012. You can’t directly compare incomes from 12 years ago and pretend that it’s not worth less today and the cost of living situation is the same .

Also yes they can afford a mortgage but they probably could have gotten a better house with a household income of 250k in 2012 than a household income of 400k today .

[Skill and Chance]

Obama's cutoff was 250k

Okay?

It's just interesting that the Democrats' cut-off for what makes somebody rich enough to pay more taxes went from $250k to $400k in the past 10 years.  It couldn't be because high-earning professionals are now mostly a Democratic constituency, could it?

I mean 250k in 2012 is worth around 338k today and housing wasn’t anywhere near as expensive in those days

A family making $250k/yr is in the 92nd percentile of households in the U.S.  If you can't afford a mortgage on that salary, it's not housing prices that are your problem. 

That's beside the point.  Of course the top tax bracket in a progressive tax system will be made up of meaningfully wealthy people! 

The intent of the tax code is generally for tax brackets to adjust with inflation and track the same %ile of household income over time.  Just using normal CPI inflation, $250K in 2012 = $341K today. 

[Vice President Christian Man]

This group seems ripe for the type of voter who once voted Republican over taxes but aren't particularly social conservatives and are now more Dem-leaning as a result.

[Bismarck]

What are the demographics of the Americans who earn over $400,000? I would guess a large percentage are Indian or Jewish Americans who vote overwhelmingly democrat.

[NorCalifornio]

If you mean rich people in Manhattan or Silicon Valley, they overwhelmingly vote D.

If you mean rich people in the Park Cities or the Memorial Villages, then they overwhelmingly vote R.

I think this dichotomy leaves out the large portion of "suburbanites of high COL deep blue cities" who tend to be older and probably compromise the most significant portion of 400k+ earners, given correlations of age and income.

The VPs, directors, and other senior management at big law, Wall Street, big tech, insurance firms, etc. are probably tilt or lean D as a whole (solid D for tech), but most of them live in the suburbs of these high COL blue cities (Westchester, Morris, etc.). And of these non city-dwellers, their politics is definitely very mixed and more R-friendly (in the anti-Trump style). We have our resident representative Jaichind here on the forum who is much more radical in some weird libertarian ways, but my point being the vast majority of highest income (400k+) earners at NYC firms are not 30-something DINK progressive Manhattanites.

If you're setting the threshold at $400k, you're definitely capturing a lot more 30-somethings than you might expect, and even some 20-somethings. At a big law firm, for example, there are probably as many or more associates making >$400k than partners (the partners of course make a lot more money total). Even more so if you are talking households.

See, e.g.: https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/

The same will be true in finance and tech.

Also, a larger portion of very high income professional workers live in urban cores (specifically the NYC urban core) than you might expect. A majority of partners at my big law firm live in Manhattan (Westchester is the second-highest, but it's about 55% Manhattan, 30% Westchester, 15% other), and I think we're fairly typical. Associates will obviously be even more urban.

I think this is an area where NYC is the exception to the rule. In most cities, you may have some rich people in the middle of the city, but most are going to be in the suburbs. I suspect that the degree to which this is true correlates with how "average" and unprestigious a city is, but most Americans aren't living in particularly glamorous cities.

I don’t disagree, but there are way fewer $400k+ earners as a percentage of the population living in “unprestigious” metros. Yes everyone making $400k+ in the Detroit metro lives in the suburbs, but that’s maybe 0.2% of the Detroit metro population vs. 2% of the NYC metro pop (making up numbers but you get the idea). In every metro where $400k+ earners are overrepresented as a portion of the population (NYC, Boston, SF, Seattle, Chicago, DC, LA, Miami, etc.), they will also be disproportionately more likely to live in the urban core.

LA and Chicago are very much not like NYC/SF/DC in this regard. Not quite like Detroit either, but the difference between the income levels in urban LA and San Francisco is quite stark.

I suppose what “urban core” means can vary, but the biggest concentration of wealth in Chicagoland is very obviously the North Side, and in LA the Hollywood Hills out to Beverly Hills, both very close to the city center relative to the size of the metro overall and (mostly, for LA) within city lines.

Obviously it depends on what you call urban core. That said, for most of the area you're pointing out in LA, the closest analogs in greater NYC would be like Great Neck, or Glen Cove, or Scarsdale. Yes, it's closer to downtown than those places, but that's what happens when you have a small mountain range close to downtown. I don't think you'd hear many locals agree that it's part of the "urban core".

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Atherton, CA has had a huge swing to the Ds in recent years.