Friday, August 22, 2008

Counting Houses

McCain has to consult with his staff to find out how many homes he has, Obama has a million dollar home--the point is each of these two top presidential candidates are trying to connect with the average middle class American voter.
See Paul Krugman's column in today's NY Times to understand the impact of defining middle class:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

According to the US Census Bureau the median income is $48,200* and only 68.1% owned their own homes ** (most probably with some financial institution). As to second home ownership the numbers fall sharply to between 6 and 12.1 per cent own second homes (Census bureau, and Kiplingers' Report).

Mike Hein, the current Ulster county(NY) administrator (and Democratic candidate for County Executive***) recently called people with household incomes of 50-60,000 dollars the working poor when it comes to looking at home heating costs for this winter (NYSERDA July's home heating oil average for NYS at $4.685, which means that heating costs could average over $4000 this winter).














*http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/010583.html
**http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/annual07/ann07t12.html
***http://heinforexec.com/

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