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Right, by portraying the lives of the super rich as so radically different from the mere upper-middle class / slightly rich, the latter become proletarians. Clearly the person living in a $4m home making $600k a year isn’t actually rich, look at how the real rich people live, they have yachts and fly private and stay in $15,000 / night hotel rooms.
In reality, along every dimension of taste, aesthetics, opinions, politics and even lifestyle, the super rich are closer to the upper-middle class than either is to 90% or more of the population.
True, but having said that this kind of thinking happens all the way down society and is not a preserve of the upper middle class. You see this a lot in Britain about schools; lower-middle class or upper-working class people who went to good state schools (Liz Truss is a prime example iirc) will pretend that because they didn't go to a private school (around 7% of students) they are actually salt-of-the-earth working class men and women who grew up in a Ken Loach film. As much as the phrase has become a joke, lots of people really do get a bit touchy about 'checking their privilege'.
So I wouldn't single out the top 1% or 10% for particular scrutiny, I'd say it extends right down to the top 50/60%.
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Except that the first person commuting to and from their $4m home by ferry can actually watch the "real rich people" flying over in helicopters. The difference exists.
It 'exists' in the same way that there's always someone richer until you're the richest person in the world, sure. There's always someone with a bigger room at the 'Du Cap, there's always someone with a larger, newer yacht, there's always someone with a better view of the park, there's always someone with a better table at the AmfAR gala and so on and so on. But you have to draw the line somewhere, and the 1% is a good place to draw it, even if the mere 99.2nd percentile is small fry compared to the 'billionaire class'. After all, most of the people the Jeff Bezoses of the world socialize with aren't other billionaires, they're 'regular' 'one percenter' people in his employ, social circles, friend groups, CEOs of charities and cultural organizations, senior politicians etc etc.
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