The average global citizen also isn't paying American costs of living. My cousins in Asia are earning easily 10x less than I am in real nominal currency, but their cost of living is commensurately less.

Measures of wealth are just numbers until put in context of local costs of living.

Which addresses the reply to your post: $100K is wealthy in parts of the country, it's not wealthy in others. Getting paid $100K in small-town Idaho is a whole different ball game than getting paid $100K in SF.

The trick is that there are a lot more $100K jobs in one place than the other. What PhasmaFelis insists on calling "living beyond your means" is often nothing more than people looking for work.

Agreed. Title is bullshit, and the article does nothing to change my mind: if you insist on living beyond your means, then no amount of income will seem like enough. $100,000/year is not a free license to move to the trendiest neighborhoods in the most expensive cities and start collecting yachts, but it's still rich by any reasonable human standards.

Rich is such a meaningless word that people can argue all day over who is rich.

Using salaries is an especially terrible choice though. Disposable income is a much better match for what we think of as rich.

Not it sure as hell does not mean one is "rich." It is, at best, an indicator of marginal affluence. It certainly is stretching the bounds of credulity to call it "merely" middle-class, though, and forget calling it "poor."

"Rich" means more than having a relatively high income. It means having the means to obtain in relative short order, or having already obtained, relative financial independence. An income of $100,000 doesn't qualify in most places. Such a person would be required to find some income if he loses his current source, and he would almost certainly suffer financially and take many hits to his credit during a period without income. This person isn't "rich" until he's amassed enough savings that he can weather such a period without significant risk to his finances or credit, which will take literally decades in most cases.

What if your job is in Manhattan where that means you are making negative income vs. your rent? And a good meal is ten times more than a beef soup shop in Taiwan? Or spending 2 hours every morning commuting into the city and back out on a bus to somewhere you can afford on $50k/yr? Is that still rich?

But it's just so hard affording a downtown condo while putting my kids through private school! I'm obviously living paycheck to paycheck exactly like the vast numbers of americans earning 2/3 or less of a living wage with no medical coverage, no paid time off, and spiraling debt!

Agreed. Earning over 100K in the US puts you in the top 20%. That's rich.

Yeah, no. No it doesn't.

Don't forget to take into account the massive amount of student debt people have now, and also the vast cost of living in larger tech centric cities such as SF and NYC. I'm not talking fancy apartments either, I'm talking regular standard 1 br apartments.

Just because someones income is a certain amount on paper it doesn't take into account other financial responsibilities that lower the amount you have leftover at the end of the month.