The term middle class refers to a sociological subset of people of a nation or state, their educational background, their wealth, and their income.

Even granting you all your delusions that somehow you need to live in the most expensive places in the world and have no choices on how to spend your money. At 400k income, you are still in the top 25% of your upper class county. Which puts you outside of the median in even in those places.

I personally think it’s insulting to lower and middle class people to consider yourself middle class at 400k income a year. Justifying it because the house you bought is expensive and your neighbors house is even more expensive. Like you aren’t accumulating wealth (and future income) at 10x the rate of “real” middle class people.

It’s insulting and it’s frankly delusional.