All of these words have slightly different meanings. “Yuppie,” as it was originally used, was more about the lifestyle of the person rather than their job or income level. To be able to sustain that lifestyle, it took a fair amount of income and thus necessitated certain sorts of jobs (or, more rarely, a certain amount of inherited wealth), but the term was about the lifestyle and not the money or the career. It was about being able to go to the new, hip restaurants, owning the new, hip furniture and electronic equipment, going to the new, hip entertainments, etc. Usually, one was supposed to live in a gentrified section of a big city and not in a suburb, however well-off. This was a rather delicately balanced thing. If you tried too much for hipness, you weren’t really a yuppie but a bohemian. If you didn’t try hard enough for hipness, you were just a suburban white-collar type. This term later got used in vaguer and vaguer ways.
“Preppie” referred to the background that a person grew up in. To go to the proper private high schools (and later the proper colleges), you probably had to be born in the right family, although it was possible but difficult for a nouveau riche parent to buy their children into preppieness. Of course, this tended to correlate with income and thus with one’s job, but it was more about style and being born into that style.
“White-collar” was about the sort of job one had. Again, this tended to correlate with income, but not consistently. Some blue-collar jobs paid better than white-collar ones.
“Organization men” and “gray-flannel-suit men” had to have the right sorts of jobs, but they also had to have the right attitude. They had to buy into the devotion to the company. They nearly always lived in the suburbs.
Ringo, could you tell us more about the use of the term “yuppie” from the late 1970’s? If you really know about its use at that point, you have made a major etymological discovery. Where did you live when you used it? What sort of socioeconomic circumstances and lifestyle did you have at that time, and what sort of socioeconomic circumstances and lifestyles did the people described by the term have? With whom did you use the term - friends, relatives, co-workers, etc.? Did you see it used on the TV or in print? Tell us anything else you remember about the sort of people who used the term and the sort of people the term applied to.