To me, 'upper class' means something like an international billionaire, or a member of a European aristocracy, someone with considerable social influence, something like that.
Here it seems to mean someone driving a new car?!
That's a weird concept of "upper class". There are very few billionaires, they don't really make up a "class". They are part of the upper class, but pretty much anybody with a personal wealth that is far above the mean would qualify for upper class in my book.
If you stopped working now and, living an average lifestyle, wouldn't have to ever work again, surely you're not middle class, but you also don't have to be a billionaire for that to be possible.
I think you'd be middle class.
Upper class is people with international influence, staff, significant land, titles, honours, membership of elite social organisations. It's not just people with a bit of money.
I wouldn't put "net wealth of 5m" into a group with "net wealth of 50k", I think the 5m person is more similar to somebody with 500m insofar that he doesn't do manual labor, has a significant income from capital gains, and has ensured that even his kids won't ever have to actually work.
Something like 50% lower, 40% middle, 10% upper class, with a tiny part of that upper class making up the super rich sounds more reasonable to me. Maybe the super rich are their own class?
Yes, isn't that the world we live in?
I wouldn't consider myself middle class with capital gains north of the median income, but I don't have a clear cut criteria to apply here.
I used to work near St Pauls so you occasionally had official events.
Also Prince Charles famously has a 40 year old Barbour he wears
I don't think upper class people regularly respond to competitions for $50 gift certificates on Craigslist, either.