liberal-lad:

America’s fat cats are convinced a million dollars won’t get them very far these days, according to a survey conducted by Fidelity Investments. The investment firm found that roughly 42 percent of more than 1,000 millionaires surveyed do not consider themselves to be “rich.” The average survey participant was 56 years old and had a mean of $3.5 million of investable assets, and all respondents had at least $1 million in assets—but many participants said they needed $7.5 million to feel truly wealthy. “Every person in the survey is wealthy,” said the president of Fidelity’s National Financial unit. “But they are still worried about outliving their assets.” One of the most persistent mantras of the Conservative zeitgeist is that being poor in America isn’t nearly as bad as Liberals claim it is. But the above quote throws the cognitive dissonance of many on the American Right into distinct relief: $1 million “doesn’t get you very far,” yet the working poor near the wage floor are seen as having a reasonable enough standard of living. This contra-intuition is so ingrained in Modern Conservatism that you can find examples of Conservative pundits claiming that $250k/year is close to poverty, which is interesting, given that a household making $250k/year is easily and comfortably within the top 5% of the population. This sort of cognitive dissonance is one of the dangers of hyper-individualism, and it continues to obscure the vision of today’s modern Conservative Movement, who, instead of focusing on balancing our budget, are more concerned with making sure taxes don’t go up on the citizens who can most easily afford it.

Great post by liberal Lad, here’s my take on the issue:

I don’t mean to defend anyone who thinks making a million dollars doesn’t make them wealthy, but some of the blame must go to the conditions we have created in the country for that to happen.

If you take inflation out of the equation and just look at relative wealth, the top 1% have benefited the most in the last 30 years from government policies, so I could see “low" millionaires comparing themselves to richer individuals and thinking they are "poor”. Another point is that in today’s world perhaps due to over-consumption or just the economic policies, it is a lot tougher to save for essentials such as retirement and afford college. These were much easier to do a generation ago..what has changed?

Now once again I would like to emphasize that compared to most of the middle class (95% for the country), the millionaires are living a more than amazing life, and they should not be taking that for granted. The point i am trying to make is that when compared to same relative wealthy of the past eras, they are not as “rich”.

Since education costs, healthcare, and saving for retirement has become next to impossible for the middle class, even the low millionaires are feeling it. What some of our extreme right friends don’t realize is that as the middle class does better, so will the millionaires. Instead of using trickle down, we need to focus on building a strong middle class that can afford the products made by millionaires and billionaires. I truly believe that is the way to make the country stronger as a whole.

Oh and living within your means helps too. Credit Cards have made extending yourself so easy that consumption occurs where it wouldn’t 30 years ago, and this is great in the short term, but in the long run really affects the overall economic health. This leaves less money for people to save for homes, retirements, and education. Until we look at our economic structure, we are headed towards disaster.

(Source: MSNBC, via )