NYT More Wildly Out Of Touch Than Ever Before With Manhattan Family Profiles

The elitist New York Times proved they are more wildly out of touch with the rest of America than ever before.

The Times published an interactive piece Monday featuring a family of three who live in the posh Upper West Side and live on an annual income of $500,000. Despite bringing in half a million per year, the couple believes they are middle class. (RELATED: New York Times Nerd Deserves Wedgie For Laughable Trump Fact Check)

If there is a genre I truly hate in the @nytimes it’s the frequent pieces featuring folks with multi-millions in assets and multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in yearly household income describing themselves as middle class, and being credulously understood that way, while… https://t.co/eW0c24qagI

— Musa al-Gharbi (@Musa_alGharbi) March 23, 2026

As Reason editor Nick Gillespie noted, the Times’ article linked to a separate article that showed the median household income for the couple’s Upper West Side neighborhood was just over $155,000. For the entire city, it was just under $80,000. (The latest census data from 2024 puts the median household income at an estimated $81,228.) And most Americans believe they are part of the middle class, according to multiple studies.

‘“I think we’re middle class for this area,” Mr. O’Leary said.’

In fact, per a link in the article: median household income in 2023 for their neighborhood was $155,710; for the city as a whole, $79,480.

Why do so many people live in fantasyworlds abt their own wealth? pic.twitter.com/eQTi6IKFgi

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) March 23, 2026

‘In New York City, wealth is often viewed in relation to your neighbors, and many of theirs make more money. The Upper West Side has the sixth-highest median income of any neighborhood in the city, according to the N.Y.U. Furman Center.’ HT @kathrynw5 https://t.co/aLbzQXnm8w pic.twitter.com/VS3K71UPyI

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) March 23, 2026

I don’t blame the New York Times for running a piece like this, as many of its readers are well-off New York residents who make double the amount this couple makes per year, and so they probably agree with the couple’s sentiment. It’s also excellent rage bait, and gets people engaged (such as myself).

But still, it shows just how out of touch the Times is, likewise their more affluent readers. Most Americans would consider themselves high royalty if they made that much money. In most areas of the U.S., and even in the slightly expensive cities of the Sun Belt, an annual income of $500,000 goes quite far. Outside of the cities, in more rural areas, $500,000 allows you to live like a king of an 18th-century monarchy.

Though it is a testament to the old truism that you are only as rich as the person next door, our minds can play naughty tricks on us and convince us that we are poorer or richer than we are due to where we are living and who we are living next to. The “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.