In the United States, a new kind of unease is spreading among the upper-middle class. We’re talking about families earning between $200,000 and $350,000 a year: technically affluent, often in the top 10% of income earners, yet increasingly under pressure. They live in nice homes, eat organic, enroll their children in sports and private schools — and still, they don’t feel rich. In fact, many struggle to pay for college or buy a home.
According to the The Wall Street Journal, this is a sign of a deeper shift. The cost of “upper-middle-class living,” once synonymous with security, has risen faster than income. Families in this bracket are squeezed by inflation, mortgages, student loans, and constant social pressure to maintain a high standard of living.
In California, for instance, wealth is often only acknowledged at the $2 million annual income mark. Those earning less risk feeling inadequate, even if they still take in far above the national average. It’s a perceptual distortion fueled by proximity to the truly wealthy: living near people with stock options, passive income, or million-dollar inheritances, one inevitably starts comparing and loses perspective.
This phenomenon has a name: affluence anxiety. It’s not material poverty, but a growing sense of insecurity and stress among those who, at least on paper, should feel safe. And that’s the core of the issue: the American success ideology has raised the bar so high that even those who’ve “made it” feel like they’re falling behind.
The system no longer denies inequality, but puts on display. And while showcasing its extremes — the ultra-rich, the philanthropic billionaires, the ethical startups — it builds a narrative in which those who are “just” well-off end up feeling like part of the problem. So even those with plenty begin to live as though they had little.
The result is a class that consumes like the rich but goes into debt like the poor, that craves security but lives with anxiety. And that fuels the system while suffering from its effects. More than a contradiction, it’s an unstable equilibrium — and perhaps one of the clearest signs that today, prosperity is no longer a condition, but a performance.
