I think very, very few people would look at their financial situation and their lifestyle and tell themselves, “Oh yeah, I’m rich.” I think that is mostly because we have a love-hate relationship with wealth: we all want more money, but heaven forbid we see ourselves as greedy! When these conversations come up, I’m reminded of the wife of some disgraced CEO – like the Jeffrey Skilling sort of guy – who claimed that the massive fraud perpetrated by her husband’s company had destroyed them… as the bankruptcy court was prohibited from taking their last mansion worth tens of millions of dollars. I’m certain in that moment, the wife did not feel like she was rich.
The reason I believe that I am rich, and people in my general situation are also rich, is because we ought to be compared to what people below us have as opposed to the smaller number of ways in which we are not like those who are wealthier than us. When I look at my ability to go out to dinner as I please (though I’m not tlaking about going to Michelin star restaurants every Saturday), deal with unplanned expenses, doing well on retirement savings, etc., it is inescapable that I am wealthy because so many Americans cannot do the same. The fact that my car payment is $250 and not $650, or that the house doesn’t have a maid’s quarters, or that the plan is for public school for kids, etc. doesn’t take away from that fact that I’m far, far more financially secure than the vast majority of Americans.
This question “who/what is rich?” is fine as far as it goes. The follow on question is usually, are the rich too rich, and what should be done to make things more fair or equitable with those that aren’t.
My wife and I would be considered to be in the top 1% per the scale above. But we both have 9-5 jobs in careers that we’ve worked hard in over the last 20 to 30 years. We both worked very hard to earn three master’s degrees between us. We both have part time jobs that take a fair amount of time, effort and energy - she’s a realtor part time, and I’m a financial manager / tax guy in my spare time. We’ve both been doing these jobs for over 15 years each and are somewhat established. So I’d say we work well over 110 hours a week.
When we go to some family events, we routinely hear from her brother about his “rich sister and husband.” He never mentions that he’s lazy and we work a real lot. Or that he actually has a more expensive house than we do but we’re really frugal, live well within our means and worked like hell to pay our home off early. Or that he works as little as possible and wouldn’t think or working overtime or getting a part time job.
I understand that we have most certinaly caught some breaks that others have not. And we are very fortunate and thankful. But we also work our tails off, save like crazy and don’t live an opulent lifestyle, when many of our friends do the exact opposite, which makes us very sensitive to the broad brush rich / poor, us / them debate we hear around us.
Not trying to derail the thread or get on a soapbox. But the “how much” part of this discussion needs the “what were you willing to do” part as well to give an accurate picture.
If the exsistence of people worse off than you means you’re rich, then shouldn’t people under the poverty line in america view themselves as rich because there’s tons of people living in hovels all over the world? A family living in section 8 housing with a TV, microwave, and telephone is MILES better off than someone living in a favela.
Yeah, those kind of discussions make me cranky. It’s the old trope about mom telling you to eat your liver and onions because there are starving children in China.
As far as “rich” vs. “wealthy” we’re all just arguing around the bottom margins here (just like THEY want us to!). I saw it in a tweet somewhere, something to the effect that a person making $150,000 a year (rich to many) would have to save 100% of their income for 23,000 years to have as much money as Howard Shultz (Starbucks CEO running for President).
So, in defining “rich” vs. “wealthy”, who’s house are you going to storm when the revolution comes? That’s all that really matters. Otherwise, why do you care?
Depends what the scope is of the question. Are Americans rich in comparison to the whole of the world? Yes. I don’t know how anyone can argue that’s not a stone-cold fact.
And are people making, say, $250,000 a year rich compared to Americans as a whole? My opinion is yes, that the facts bear that out.
Absolutely. It’s all about perspective, as I said. Should a poor family in, say, France consider themselves rich when comparing themselves to others? Why not? Sure, they don’t feel rich…but then, most of the people I know who you would almost certainly consider to be rich don’t think of themselves that way either. Compared to a family in Sub-Saharan Africa, say, or South East Asia (or, hell, a lot of families in China, India or Russia, to use countries considered to be great powers or at least regional powers), that ‘poor’ family in France is doing pretty good…in fact, amazingly good. Compared to, perhaps, you, they aren’t, but then they would think YOU are ‘rich’…while you are looking up the line at someone else who you think of as ‘rich’…and they are looking up the line at someone they think is ‘rich’, and so on, all the way up to the tippy top (Bezos? Gates? I can’t keep up with who is currently on top). Who is ‘rich’, and how are you deciding that?
Look at the answers in this thread. They vary wildly. What is ‘rich’ to me is obviously different than you or most other posters. Even Ravenman’s (who’s posts in this thread I almost completely agree with) $250k/year thing I could take exception too, depending on where they live. Sure, on average in the US that is a lot more than the median, but in Manhattan? Or Malibu? Or other exclusive parts of the country? Not sure you could even afford to live in some of them. Or, to move out of the US, parts of London, or Paris? You’d be struggling to live in those places on that salary. While someone living in a smaller rural town making, say, $50k a year might be able to live really well, with plenty of money to spare and everything they need.
I disagree. You’re talking about changing the entire discussion from “what” to “why.” And the why discussion is much more contentious, as it delves into individual (ir)responsibility rather than an abstract threshold.
My definition is top 5% is wealthy, top 1% is rich, despite the fact that people in the 5% fall all over themselves in IMHO topics to insist they’re merely upper-middle class. If you’re doing better than 95% of people you need to own that.
While wealth certainly is relative, I think there’s a limit: at the very least, I don’t think you can consider someone “rich” if they are nearly the poorest possible for their given time and location. A medieval king was “rich” because they were much richer than the average peasant even though they didn’t have the Internet, planes, and modern medicine. Whereas the average working class person in America, living paycheck to paycheck or even on public assistance, should not be considered “rich”, even in comparison to medieval peasants or shantytown-dwellers, because it is not possible to be poorer in modern America - you can’t go back in time before the print age.
And there are laws in America against shantytowns and other cheap accommodations. This is important because it is not possible for the very poor to be frugal in America like some imply they should be. So their feelings of being poor are valid: they are on the edge of financial ruin through no fault of their own. Whereas if they lived in a modest apartment elsewhere in the world, they would have the option of moving to an even crappier place and saving money given the same income, so in that case, there would be an argument that they were rich.
You don’t have to go back in time…merely cross the border into Mexico and drive south. There is a reason why so many people risk so much to try and enter the US illegally, even though they will be payed less than US workers and not receive most of the benefits of being a citizen and often live in far less hospitable conditions than the poorest US citizen…and that this looks good to them and seem a risk worth taking. To them, a poor US blue collar worker living pay check to pay check with a crappy car and a crappy apartment seems rich indeed.
Perception is the key. Unless we are at the very top of the pyramid (or at the very bottom), we are always going to be able to look up a bit to see someone we perceive as rich compared to us…as well as some who are obviously poorer and less well off, especially if we widen our gaze to include more than our parochial viewpoint.
I see the 5% as upper middle class. These are your regular doctors (GP), lawyers, mildly successful entrepreneurs. You, as a middle class guy, can still get a beer with them or invite them to your super bowl party without it feeling too strange. Their kids probably still go to public school.
Rich (1%) means there is a gulf between them and the middle class guy that is large and hard to overcome.
The more I think about this, I equate the rich with the wealthy. I consider them both to have generational wealth that can be passed on to their children, either as a significant amount of money (greater than say $4M), or a business that can generate significant money well into the future.
I have friends that have just lived well with very good paying jobs that have a good nest egg, but it’s not enough really pass on to their children and change their lives. That is what makes the switch from upper middle class to wealthy in my opinion.
How are you calculating that though? Is a squarely middle class family who happens to luck into buying a house in an neighborhood that gets really super hot 40 years later “wealthy”, because they can sell that house for 4 million, even though they paid $30k for it in 1974 and didn’t pay it off until 1999?
Or are we talking literally 4 million in assets other than their home? In that case, I’d agree.
Not to hijack, but I’ve wondered after participating in these threads over the years if maybe we shouldn’t redefine the socioeconomic strata in terms of a combination of financial resiliency and what they can afford their children… Those seems to be the real defining characteristics, not strict things like the income on their W-2, etc…
I think you are touching on something that is very important: there’s a difference between talking about class in the context of income and wealth, and class in the context of societal values.
There’s an awful lot of people who embrace what we would probably think of as “middle class values” — being cool with public schools, only wanting one house and two cars, etc — because that’s what they are able to provide for themselves and their families.
But I’d say a there are also a lot of people who stretch the strictly economic definition of middile income, but still hold the same values. There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with holding the same general values and expectations as middle class America, even if one’s financial state is really pretty different than the average American.
I think that this is often where the conversation breaks down, where someone like me, who is quite financially secure, also has the same expectations of life and career as many, many people who happen to be worth far less than me… but I have to acknowledge that my earnings do not make me the same as them in a financial respect.
What I was getting at was along those lines, but more along the lines of defining say… middle class by saying that they have some cushion against a single calamity* at any given time, and expect to leave their children some small inheritance, usually the value of the home.
By “calamity” I mean a major appliance spontaneously crapping out irreparably, or unexpected home repairs, or whatever that cost upwards of $1000 bucks.
Upper middle might be that, except cushion against multiple calamities, and expect to give their children something beyond just the sale price of the house.
Rich/wealthy would be where “calamity” is redefined to something else- no combination of mundane stuff like water heaters, repairs to homes, etc… would ever classify as a “calamity”. And their expectation would be to maintain or build the family wealth for their children, and subsequent generations through trusts, etc…
