This topic goes under the heading: Can these people be for real?!?

OK, so a recent Fidelity Investments survey showed that almost half of one thousand American millionaires surveyed said that you need at least $7.5 million in order to feel really rich:

www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/14/us-fi...

Everyone interviewed had at least $1 million in assets, but they were still worried that they would outlive their assets.  And, of course, they're worried about funding their lifestyle.

Also noted in the piece was the fact that 5% of the wealthiest Americans own 55% of the nation's wealth.

Yeah, we wouldn't want them to have to live in only two mansions in America instead of an extra holiday home in the Bahamas, or to only be able to drive a Maserati instead of a Bentley.

I read an articcle about how everybody (or most everybody) tends to think of themselves as middle class.  That lots of people are upper middle class or affluent but still see themselves as middle class.  I guess that is millionaires also.  It is because we tend to associate with people that are just wealtheir or just poorer than we are so we always appear to ourselves to be in the middle. 

I know alot of people like this myself who live in homes that are 800K+, send both kids to private schools, take nice vacations, drive recent model vehicles and have country club memberships tell me ademately they are not wealthy.  In their mind they are not. 

Mar 16, 2011 -- 11:12PM, solfeggio wrote:

Well, my kids didn't go to private schools; our holidays were the sort where you drive to a beach on a Sunday afternoon; we never even knew anybody who belonged to a country club, let alone belonged ourselves; and our one and only car is eighteen years old.  And, oh yeah, our old, ramshackle house is located in a workingclass blue-collar neighbourhood in a workingclass suburb of a big city.

My husband and I are pensioners who are fortunate enough to live in a country where oldies are given subsidised medical care and cheap prescriptions, and we are also given a gold card that enables us to take the train for free.  We are extremely grateful for these and other perks that we would find hard to afford otherwise.

So, no, I am sorry but I cannot even begin to identiy with the filthy rich so-called middle class at all.  And, I find it very, very hard to believe that the majority of Americans live like millionaires with 800k houses and country club memberships.

If anything, there is no more American middle class, and the country is more and more polarised into the incredibly rich and the incredibly poor.

 

NO Solfelgio I did not say that the majority of americans live in 800K mansions. What I said was there is a tendancy to think whatever your lifestyle is as the norm.  And people are more likely to downplay their status of wealth and imagine themselves as middle class. 

So whereas most american families get by on something like 60K per year other people really believe that 200K is the norm and not wealthy. 

I have found a rather reverse take on this in the Atlanta burbs: people who are barely middle class who believe they are upper middle class. Some of this derives because housing here is less expensive than in other areas. The cost of living here is slightly lower, too. These people vote Republican when it is not in their best interests.

No one in my family,except for my youger daughter has worked for a union but we support unions. While she was in high school our younger daughter worked in a union grocery store and was better treated than her friend who worked in a non-union grocery.

My greatest concern right now is with coporate wealth uninterested in investing in high speed rail bult here and mainting the rail systems we do have. Our infrastructure needs upgrading; there is little or no interest by coporations awash in capital to get involved here either. Easy overblown profits are wanted and sought. And I've never had a problem with decent profit. I am influenced by Paul Kruger's thinking, which makes me a keynesian I suppose.