I thought I was rich but they told me no

Twice today (that I've noticed) people made comments in the news saying that making $200K isn't really all that much. It's one of those things that hovers in the background, usually said with that fatherly homespun wisdom style that gets people to start nodding in agreement before they even hear what is being said. Never emphasized as the main point but casually dropped in the sentence. Listen to fox news or a GOP speech and you probably will hear it. After working in in every so often for years and years, it starts becoming that 'conventional wisdom' that everybody knows and doesn't need explaining.

It plays on people's, or should I say folks', fantasies and aspirations and what they want to hear -Yeah, it isn't that much money really, and if it's not that much money then maybe I will make that much someday. It's the only way the GOP, whose tax policies shift the tax burden down the economic spectrum, can get people on that low end to tolerate and even support and vote for those policies based on a wish that one day they will have it made and get Uncle Sam off their future selves' back, at their present selve's expense. If it can get a former hippie democrat to believe it and base their vote on it it can convince anyone.

For the record, less than 4% of the country makes over $200K in a year.