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Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
This Was the Salary Required To Be Upper Middle Class in 2015
Many people aspire to join the upper middle class and make enough money to cover their expenses while keeping up with regular monthly investments. The bar has steadily gotten higher due to inflation, and it's a testament to how fiat currencies lose purchasing power over time. Explore More: Read Next: For instance, data from Pew Research suggests that you had to earn more than $169,800 per year in 2022 to be a part of the upper middle class. That's $194,149.55 in today's dollars using the CPI Inflation Calculator provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We can use this same calculator to determine how much people had to earn each year to be a part of the upper middle class in 2015. The CPI Inflation Calculator indicates that a $142,622.89 salary was enough to be considered a member of the upper middle class in 2015. That comes to $11,968.57 per month. Expenses are always lower if you look back a few years due to regular money printing. That's why a salary that was good enough a decade ago may no longer be sufficient. However, it's important to note that the pandemic resulted in record money printing, which led to significantly higher inflation for a short period of time. Check Out: Inflation wasn't too bad before the pandemic, as it mostly hovered between 2% and 3% each year. However, 2021 to 2023 made living costs significantly higher. Here's the breakdown of how much buying power $169,800 in 2022 had in the following years: 2015: $142,622.89 2016: $145,086.87 (reasonable inflation growth rate) 2017: $147,807.07 2018: $151,947.17 2019: $154,667.37 2020: $154,849.76 (notably low inflation due to lockdowns reducing how much we spent, but this is an anomaly) 2021: $162,580.96 2022: $169,800 (the original figure used in this calculation) 2023: $183,678.22 (substantial increase) 2024: $189,682.72 (still a big increase that starts to moderate) 2025: $194,149.55 (further moderation in the growth rate) Higher living costs have been the norm for decades. The best way to deal with inflation is by investing in assets that grow at a faster rate than inflation. Other strategies involve working harder and smarter, which require short-term and maybe even long-term sacrifices, depending on your financial situation. Some people may have to work longer hours or consider weekend shifts. Developing career skills that can help you get a higher-paying job can help you earn more money while working less. A side hustle may also be necessary. You can eventually turn some side hustles into full-time career opportunities if you stick with them. It may also be worth job hopping. You can get a higher salary with a different company, and if you like your current company, you can use a new job offer as leverage to get a higher salary. Cutting costs is another great strategy, but there are limits to how much you can cut. Focusing on income growth is the best way to combat rising inflation. More From GOBankingRates 3 Luxury SUVs That Will Have Massive Price Drops in Summer 2025 6 Hybrid Vehicles To Stay Away From in Retirement 8 Common Mistakes Retirees Make With Their Social Security Checks This article originally appeared on This Was the Salary Required To Be Upper Middle Class in 2015
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arellano: Trump was winning with Latinos. Now, his cruelty is derailing him
The Pew Research Center is one of the most trusted polling firms in the country, especially when it comes to Latinos. Last week, it published findings that should have been a victory lap for Donald Trump and his tortuous relationship with America's largest minority. According to Pew, Trump won 48% of Latino voters in the 2024 presidential election — the highest percentage ever recorded by a Republican presidential nominee and a 12 percentage point improvement from his 2020 showing. Latinos made up 10% of Trump's coalition, up from 7% four years ago. Latino men went with a Republican for the first time. Trump even improved his share of support among Latinas — long seen by Democratic leaders as a bulwark against their macho Trumpster relatives — by a 13-point margin, a swing even greater than that of Latino men. These stats prove what I've been warning about for years: that Latinos were souring on illegal immigration — even in blue California — and tiring of a Democratic Party too focused on policies that weren't improving their lives. This gave Trump a chance to win over Latino voters, despite his years-long bloviations against Mexico and Central American nations, because Latinos — who assimilate like any other immigrants, if not more so — were done with the Democratic status quo. They were willing to take a risk on an erratic strongman resembling those from their ancestral lands. Read more: Arellano: How an 'American Cholo' went from Hillary Clinton fan to Trump voter Pew's findings confirm one of Trump's most remarkable accomplishments — one so unlikely that professional Latinos long dismissed his election gains as exaggerations. Those voters could have been the winds blowing the xenophobic sails of his deportation fleet right now. All Trump had to do was stick to his campaign promises and target the millions of immigrants who came in illegally during the Biden years. Pick off newcomers in areas of the country where Latinos remain a sizable minority and don't have a tradition of organizing. Dare Democrats and immigrant rights activists to defend the child molesters, drug dealers and murderers Trump vowed to prioritize in his roundups. Conduct raids like a slow boil through 2026, to build on the record-breaking number of Latino GOP legislators in California and beyond. Trump has done none of that. He instead decided to smash his immigration hammer on Los Angeles, the Latino capital of the U.S. Instead of going after the worst of the worst, la migra has nabbed citizens and noncitizens alike. A Times analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley Law found that nearly 70% of those arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement from June 1 through June 10 had no criminal convictions. Instead of harassing newcomers with few ties to the U.S., agents are sweeping up migrants who have been here for decades. Instead of doing operations that drew little attention, as happened under Presidents Obama and Biden — and even during Trump's first term — masked men have thrown around their power like secret police in a third-rate dictatorship while their bosses crow about it on social media. Instead of treating people with some dignity and allowing them a chance to contest their deportations, the Trump administration has stuffed them into detention facilities like tinned fish and treated the Constitution like a suggestion instead of the law of the land. The cruelty has always been the point for Trump. But he risks making the same mistake that California Republicans made in the 1980s and 1990s: taking a political win they earned with Latinos and turning it into trash. Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of the last amnesty for immigrants in the country illegally. It was signed into law by Ronald Reagan, who famously said that Latinos were Republicans who didn't know it yet. The Great Communicator knew that the best way to bring them into the GOP was to push meat-and-potato issues while not demonizing them. The 1986 amnesty could have been a moment for Republicans to win over Latinos during the so-called Decade of the Hispanic. Instead, California politicians began to push for xenophobic bans, including on store signs in other languages and driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, arguing that these supposed invaders were destroying the Golden State. This movement culminated in the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994, which sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants and was eventually declared unconstitutional. We all know how that worked out. My generation of Mexican Americans — well on our way to assimilation, feeling little in common with the undocumented immigrants from southern Mexico and Central America who arrived after our parents — instead became radicalized. We waved the Mexican flag with pride, finding no need to brandish the Stars and Stripes that we kept in our hearts. We helped Democrats establish a supermajority in California and tossed Republicans into the political equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits. Read more: Prop. 187 forced a generation to put fear aside and fight. It transformed California, and me When I covered anti-ICE protests in June outside a federal building in Santa Ana, it felt like the Proposition 187 years all over again. The Mexican tricolor flew again, this time joined by the flags of El Salvador, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. The majority of protesters were teens and young adults with no ties to the immigrant rights groups I know — they will be the next generation of activists. I also met folks such as Giovanni Lopez. For a good hour, the 38-year-old Santa Ana resident, wearing a white poncho depicting the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, blew a loud plastic horn as if he were Joshua trying to knock down the walls of Jericho. It was his first protest. 'I'm all for them deporting the criminals,' Lopez said during a short break. 'But that's not what they're doing.... They're getting regular people, and that's not right. You gotta stand up for regular raza.' Since then, I've seen my social media feeds transform into a barrio CNN, as people share videos of la migra grabbing people and onlookers unafraid to tell them off. Other reels feature customers buying out street vendors for the day so they can remain safely at home. The transformation has even hit home: My dad and brother went to a 'No Kings' rally in Anaheim a few weeks ago — without telling each other, or me, beforehand. When rancho libertarians like them are angry enough to publicly fight back, you know the president is blowing it with Latinos. Back to Pew. Another report released last month found that nearly half of Latinos are worried that someone they know might get deported. The fear is real, even among Latino Republicans, with just 31% approving of Trump's plan to deport all undocumented immigrants, compared with 61% of white Republicans. California Assemblymember Suzette Martinez Valladares and state Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh are among those GOP skeptics. They signed a letter to Trump from California Republican legislators asking that his migra squads focus on actual bad hombres and "when possible, avoid the kinds of sweeping raids that instill fear and disrupt the workplace." When proud conservatives like Ochoa Bogh and Valladares, who is co-chair of the California Hispanic Legislative Caucus, are disturbed by Trump's deportation deluge, you know the president's blowing it with Latinos. Yet Trump is still at it. This week, the Department of Justice announced it was suing the L.A. City Council and Mayor Karen Bass, arguing that their "sanctuary" city policy was thwarting "the will of the American people regarding deportations." By picking on the City of Angels, Trump is letting us set an example for everyone else — because no one gets down for immigrant rights like L.A., or creates Latino political power like we do. When mass raids pop up elsewhere, communities will be ready. Many Latinos voted for Trump because they felt that Democrats forgot them. Now that Trump is paying attention to us, more and more of us are realizing that his intentions were never good — and carrying our passports because you just never know. You blew it, Donald — but what else is new? Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Telegraph
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
If this ceasefire holds, Trump's foreign policy agenda would be a roaring triumph
Donald Trump is consolidating his reputation as a peace president. After the US facilitated an end to the Israel-Iran war and a de-escalation of the festering Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda conflict, Trump has turned his attention to Israel's war against Hamas. In a Truth Social post, the American president claimed that Israel had agreed to a 60-day-ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal 'because it will not get better.' Strong words, but is Trump's optimism about peace in Gaza warranted? Hamas and its main sponsor Iran's current vulnerabilities play into Trump's hands. Israeli public opinion adds to this positive outlook. Even though only 21 per cent of Israelis surveyed in a February-March 2025 Pew Research poll believe in peaceful coexistence with Palestinians, the popularity of a long-term occupation of Gaza has nosedived. The clout of pro-peace voices, ranging from hostage families to opposition leader Yair Lapid, has also grown. Despite these trends, though, history shows that there are reasons for pessimism. The last two truce-for-hostage release deals in November 2023 and January 2025 dramatically unravelled and morphed into higher-intensity conflict. Many of the same factors that caused peace to fail in the past are still impeding the path to a sustainable ceasefire today. The biggest roadblock to peace is Hamas's continued influence in the Gaza Strip. Israel has assassinated Hamas's senior leadership figures such as Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, and most recently killed Hakham Muhammad Issa Al-Issa, the logistical mastermind of the October 7 attacks. Despite claiming these big scalps, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot claim victory in his maximalist goal of eradicating Hamas. This failure is causing Netanyahu's far-Right coalition partners to push for continued war in Gaza. On Monday, Israeli finance minister Betzalel Smotrich confidently declared that an end to the Gaza War will not happen, and that Netanyahu is not ready to sue for peace. Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, is forming an intra-Cabinet coalition with Smotrich to thwart the deal's implementation. Aside from creating political rifts in Netanyahu's orbit, Hamas's survival paves the way for a longer-term Israeli military presence in Gaza. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz wants Israeli forces to remain in security zones in Gaza and provide a 'buffer' to protect Israeli communities. This stipulation could cause Hamas to reject the ceasefire deal and diminish the prospects of the release of the 50 remaining Israeli hostages. A lack of clarity on the path to a Palestinian state, the probable expansion of Israel's West Bank settlement infrastructure and the continued bellicosity of Yemen's Houthi militants create an even more perilous environment for peace.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Is There A 'Best Age' for Major Life Milestones? What Americans Say About Marriage, Kids, Owning A Home, And Retirement
There's no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to major life milestones. In fact, when the Pew Research Center asked more than 3,600 U.S. adults about the "best age" to get married, have a child, buy a home, or retire, a significant portion said there isn't one. But among those who do think there's an ideal age, some clear patterns emerged — and they vary depending on age, income, religion, and political views. Don't Miss: Maximize saving for your retirement and cut down on taxes: . Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Roughly half of Americans say there's no ideal age for tying the knot. But among those who do offer a number, about 23% say ages 25 to 29 are best. The average across all responses comes out to 26.5 years old. Despite this average, real-world trends show marriage is happening later. According to Pew's previous analysis of Census Bureau data, a record 25% of 40-year-olds in the U.S. had never been married as of 2021 — up significantly from prior generations. Here too, 40% of Americans say there's no best age to become a parent. But among those who gave a specific age, 28% said 25 to 29 was the sweet spot. The national average answer: 27.3 years old. That lines up closely with real-life data — the average age of first-time mothers in the U.S. is 27.5, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Parents tend to recommend becoming one slightly earlier, at age 26.9, than those without children, who recommend age 27.9. Still, views are shifting. A separate Pew survey found nearly half of U.S. adults under 50 who don't have kids say they're unlikely to ever have them. Trending: Tired of Grid Failures and Charging Deserts? This Startup Has a Solar Fix and $25M+ in Sales — Buying a first home is a major goal for many Americans, but half of those surveyed said there's no single best age to do it. Among those who gave a number, most suggested sometime between 25 and 34. The average ideal age was 28.8 years old. Homeowners were slightly more likely to suggest buying earlier, at 28.4, than renters, who suggested age 30 was ideal. But affordability remains a hurdle. The National Association of Realtors says the median age of first-time homebuyers is now 38 — nearly a decade later than what most survey respondents consider ideal. Retirement views also vary widely. About a third of Americans say there's no ideal age, but 26% say ages 65 to 69 are best. The average response was 61.8. That's younger than when full Social Security benefits typically begin — between ages 65 and 67, depending on your birth year. Still, the idea of working past 65 is becoming more common. Pew reports that 19% of Americans over 65 were employed in found that perspectives on milestone timing vary by demographic. For example, younger adults tend to suggest later ages for marriage and children, but an earlier retirement age. Republicans lean toward younger ideal ages for most milestones — except retirement — compared with Democrats. Income and religion also play a role. Higher-income adults and those who say religion is less important tend to suggest later ages for marriage, parenthood, and retirement than their lower-income or more religious counterparts. While averages can give a snapshot, many Americans agree there's no perfect timeline for life's biggest moments. Personal values, finances, and changing societal norms all shape what feels like the "right time." For most, it's less about hitting a specific number — and more about being ready when the moment comes. Read Next: Image: Shutterstock Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report This article Is There A 'Best Age' for Major Life Milestones? What Americans Say About Marriage, Kids, Owning A Home, And Retirement originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: A reminder in Africa that the religious freedoms we take for granted are fragile
As Christianity declines in the West, the faith is flourishing in sub-Saharan Africa, which is seeing the fastest growth in Christianity the world over. By 2060, more than 4 in 10 Christians worldwide are expected to live in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with just 1 in 10 in 1970, according to Pew Research. But this growth is coming at a cost. Unlike their counterparts in the U.S., African Christians increasingly risk violent death for their beliefs. Nigeria, home to one of Africa's largest and fastest-growing Christian populations, has also become one of the world's deadliest places to practice the faith. On June 13, about 200 Christians were massacred by a group of jihadists in Yelwata, a town located in Benue State, which is almost entirely Christian. Most of the victims were internally displaced people sheltering at a nearby Catholic mission, many of them women and children. This tragically is not unusual in Nigeria. During Holy Week, more than 150 Christians were killed in targeted attacks across central Nigeria. Some watchdog groups estimate that more than 50,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed by Islamist extremists since 2009. The State Department reports that fatal attacks in Nigeria are ongoing. Moreover, in this violent region, the atrocities aren't limited to Christians. Innocents of all faiths fall victim to militants, including members of the Muslim faith, which is also growing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. Some reports estimate that tens of thousands of moderate Muslims also have been killed by extremists in Nigeria, reflecting the broader toll of militant violence. Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, a Catholic leader in Benue State where the atrocities occurred, testified in March before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, pleading with officials to take notice of what's happening. He described his home as 'one of the most dangerous and insecure places for Christians,' and his testimony came months before the June 13 attack. He noted that villagers sometimes are warned in advance of attacks and that even if they contact police for protection, no help comes and the slaughters happen anyway. 'Constitutionally, we are a secular country, but our unity has been fragile,' he said. 'We live in fear because at any point, it can be our turn to be killed. But to remain silent is to die twice, so I have chosen to speak.' Pope Leo offered a timely prayer for Nigeria during a June 15 address in St. Peter's Square. 'I pray that security, justice and peace prevail in Nigeria, a beloved country that has suffered various forms of violence,' he said. We do not know the sort of fear of which Bishop Anagbe spoke because we live in a country that believes in the right to religious freedom. It's why we find alleged hate crimes such as the May slaying of a young Jewish couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, in Washington, D.C., so devastating. We feel as if we are shielded from the sectarian violence that afflicts other parts of the globe by virtue simply of being American and when hate-based violence occurs here, that confidence is undermined. The First Amendment protects our religious freedoms, hardly limited to the three great Abrahamic religions, but it doesn't guarantee them. We write this not only to spotlight the horrors others face for expressing their faith, but to remind ourselves that America's religious liberty is rare, fragile and worth protecting.
