Who is affluent?

There is still a huge debate going on to raise taxes on affluent people making more than 250k and more as the government (and majority of the people) think that they are the richest ones who can afford to pay the taxes and fund the lower class. But who defines affluent and how did they come about this arbitrary figure of 250k to define affluent? Although I don’t make that much money and neither the majority of the Americans, this figure can be deceptive. Out of the 250k, after adding all the taxes (federal, state and local) you go down to maybe less than 150k. The needs of the so called affluent are entirely different than other people. They are still paying more taxes but they also live in expensive neighborhoods, shop at expensive stores and eat at expensive restaurants. Furthermore their kids go to expensive schools and then you have all the mortgages and utilities and other miscellaneous expenses included, they are paying more than their fare share. Although I am not defending them, effluent's threshold starting at 200k for single filers and 250k for a family is really not affluent if you start counting how much they are paying. Although you can argue that they can live in less expensive neighborhoods to save money but then the human mentality is if you get richer, your expenses also goes up no matter what class you are in. So before raising taxes, all the other tax implications should be considered before we lump the affluent at this arbitrary threshold level.