hiss piece spark sparked allison shager, the definition of milt class is not about the haves or the have nots, it is more nuanced than one year's income. they both join me, thank you to both of you. you are not in opposition to each other but you are representative of a struggle that we have had on this show for a couple of years. we started out thinking allison it could be a pretty easy project to figure out who the middle class was, but it depends who you are and what your circumstances are. >> a lot of different ways to measure it, with income and wealth. in some ways wealth is a better measure because it gives you a better sense of financial health but even income, your income varies a lot over time. you can be on a middle class earning track but you can be on a different trajectory during your earning life. >> for the last two years, all of which bring in more than 100,000 a year they were immediately set back when things went wrong when something broke, a car broke or someone lost a job. so they had income that bryce would argue was better than middle class income but they had noth