I'm one of the six figure guys Gross is writing about. I know damn well that I am not rich, because as a lawyer I carry water for people who really are rich. What I am is a comfortable member of the mandarin class. The difference is where the money comes from.

My income is based almost entirely on my work. I am not in any substantial sense an owner. I could not live as I do on the income from my assets. If I get fired, I will have to scramble for another job. When I retire, I will have to dip into capital to maintain my standard of living, and the question is whether or not I will outlive my money. That's not rich.

Rich is to have a sufficient income from capital that one need not work at anything other than managing that income and preserving the capital on which it is based. You have capital as an entrepreneur owner, an inheritor, or a senior enough manager that you can make the corporation you manage give it to you in stock options and deferred comp.

Now I also understand that to someone making the median household income in this country, which is about one fifth of my current income, I look rich. Through the telephoto lens, the difference between me and someone who pulls down five, ten or fifty times what I do is insignificant to invisible. But when you get up close, it's very apparent.

I would ask that you survey your consumption habits; what you own, eat, use, etc.. You are rich. You may be struggling to pay your bills, but your bills are bills of choice. If you don't feel that way it is because you have leveraged yourself beyond your means, your decision.

totally agree with jack cerf. well said.

When Mr. Cerf said this:

"I could not live as I do on the income from my assets."

I just had to wonder... how does he live? Comfortably, no doubt... but living comfortably is what richness is all about. Maybe he's living a tad beyond his means... but in any case it's tough to argue nowadays that the middle class lives as he does. Apparently, rich people fear the taint of being labelled "rich." Whether they doubt their camel's chances of squeezing though the eye of the needle on their way to heaven, or they simply realize that there's simply more boho cachet to be found in being contemptuous toward the bourgeoisie, I couldn't say.

Jesus, what's the matter with these people? Never mind their level of wealth, be it $250,000 a year or $250,000 a month, it ain't ever enough. "Nope, I'm not rich. That guy across the street who insists on washing his Gulfstream in his front yard... he's the bloated plutocrat on the block." There's always somebody who's rolling in it more than these guys, and they have to insist that they're just regular middle-class taxpayin' J. Joseph Sixpack IV... er, Joe Sixpack, just like you, with the same problems of exorbitant property taxes on their beachfront condos and criminally high gas prices for their German sports cars.

Yeah, life's a bitch for them, too.

jack_cerf probably has health insurance, enough to eat, and cash for incidentals. I live in an area where many of my students live in rundown trailers, qualify for free lunch, and think a big night out on the town is a trip to Mickey D's. It's all relative.

I've been reading these posts about rich or not rich, and I finally understand this "nation of whiners" I've been hearing so much about.

It's never enough is it? And yet we have the balls to wonder why the rest of the world sees us as spoiled, decadent, selfish brats.

I might look "rich" to someone who just sees my salary of $75K (people often accuse me of it). But I earn this salary because I took out $80K in student loans...and then I had to take this job because it was the only one that would allow me to make my payments on that student loan debt-still barely getting by. If I lose this job, which is possible right now...I lose my crappy apartment, I default on my student loans, I default on my credit cards, I have no savings...in my field (that I spent the $80K on) I'll never be able to get something that pays this much again...I'm basically poor- when it comes down to it I have nothing except an education. My friends who make less than me are all buying houses and I'm skipping grocery trips. Therefore, I can understand your argument that someone who makes $250K might not be rich. It all depends on what you have in the bank. But I would like to be taxed on that whole rather than on just the number my employer gives me. Especially since I spent all my money to try to get into a field to do work that would benefit everyone.

Actually, my wife and I live well within our income, which is why I say I am comfortable. And since I have a weakly developed envvy gene, I am not deeply troubled by the people I know who have a great deal more than I do. But I am neither an owner nor the kind of manager who exercises the de facto power of ownership on his own behalf. What I can leave my children is the education -- academic and cultural -- that they need to take their place in the mandarin class. I will not leave them sufficient capital for them to live on. Nor will they have -- unless they go out and do better than I have done -- that sense of entitlement and command that goes with genuine wealth. There is a hierarchy, and people like me are within viewing distance of the top but well below it.

Hell with it, anyway. It's a dumb argument. Until we all get issued a handy laminated Wealth table which clearly spells out how much income plus how much savings plus material assets minus how much debt divided by number of household members equals what category of wealth from Gandhi-esque poverty to Trumpish ostentation... well, then we'll never figure out who's rich and who ain't. Jack's Comfortable. Bill's Loaded. Michael is Filthy Rich, Janet's Doing Well For Herself, Andrew is Just Scraping By, Teresa is Livin' Large, and Simon Lights Cigars With Hundred Dollar Bills. It puts me in mind of the old days, when Idiot, Imbecile, and Moron were not interchangeable, but were ascending levels of mental competency. With actual IQ numbers assigned to each. These days, most people would consider the three terms equally offensive. Just as nobody would want to be called "Filthy Rich" any more than they'd want to be called "Stinking Rich," though one may well be higher up the totem pole than the other. Until we get that laminated cheat sheet, though, we'll never know.

But at least the mandarins are comfortable, though I personally would hesitate to self-identify with a term that largely connotes "bureaucrat" or "traditionalist."

Beats being called "rich," I guess.

I don't think Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, or Paris Hilton, to name three very different personalities, would mind being called either filthy or stinking rich. But then they are.

And "mandarin" connotes more than bureaucracy. Paul Johnson, in his History of the Jews, described Jewish society in the Diaspora as a "cathedocracy," from the Latin cathedra for a professor's chair. What he meant was that the rabbis had authority and prestige based upon their learning, which was deferred to by the entire community, including the wealthy. That's the social role that the people I call mandarins would like to have.