> 100k a year in this country makes you fucking loaded, period
I think that's true. But I don't think it's the perceptions that are screwed up, it's just that people who are at the $100k/year level typically are trying to live a $150k/year lifestyle, so they have a crushing mortgage and have given themselves goals that are slightly out of their reach and so they don't feel "wealthy" ... and they aren't! Yes, they have a lifestyle that's unattainable on $30k (at least for long :-), but no: they are not wealthy.
Here's the difference: wealthy people don't think about the cost of their lifestyle; everyone else is consumed by it, whether it means simply paying the rent and buying your family food or how to make the payments on your BMW and why your daughter's long-distance bill is so damn high.
You _can_ be wealthy at $100k per year (or $30k per year!), but it takes the will to live within your means. Do you know anyone who spends less than 10% of their take home pay on housing? The biggest house I ever lived in was the one we had when I was growing up.
In 1973 my parents bought a 4 bedroom house in a decent-enough neighborhood in Buffalo, NY for $18,500. The 30 year mortgage was about $200/month and we often were close: my mother was a public schoolteacher and my father worked for a supermarket chain as a commercial artist. We were not loaded by any stretch of the imagination; I'd say "lower middle class" if pressed. Yet, if my parents still lived there, they'd be two years away from paying off the mortgage completely, and their payment would still be $200/month.
Where do you know in the US that you can get 4 bedrooms and a back yard for $200/month? You sure can't even get it in Buffalo anymore.
/jordan