Hanna Horvath explains what is material and positional precarity in her insightful post about how the middle class was created by government policies, and now that the policy no longer exists it has created to two groups of people.
Material precarity describes people for whom the basics — not the aspirational stuff, the basics — are genuinely falling out of reach. As I said before, the middle class can’t truly be defined as an income number — someone earning $80K in rural Ohio and someone earning $80K in Brooklyn are likely living in different economies.
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Positional precarity: when you have money and it’s still not enough
The HENRY — high earner, not rich yet, gets a bad rap. Though this group makes good money on paper, typically well over six figures, they find themselves in a state of disenfranchisement.
I believe much of this is because their expectations for the kind of life six figures would bring is no longer possible. A household earning $200,000 in 2005 could likely absorb a mortgage, two kids in decent public schools, a yearly vacation, and retirement contributions. That same household in 2026, adjusted for inflation, may find itself running calculations that don’t resolve — the house costs twice what it should relative to income, childcare eating a second salary, and the “good” school district has become its own arms race of tutoring, travel sports, and enrichment programs that didn’t exist twenty years ago.
This explains the quarterly viral Reddit posts about a couple making $800K in NYC who feel like they’re middle class.