This Gallup poll asking people how much they would have to earn to be rich is kind of like a Rorschach test. What you see in it will be overwhelmingly dependent on your own place on our unequal income scale and class background. It's a reminder of how steeply incomes shoot up at the top end and how many people are crowded at the bottom end. The median individual income in this country, let's not forget, is $26,400, so the $60,000 that 18 percent of Gallup's respondents said would be enough to be rich is more than double the median. The $150,000 a year that was the median to be rich in this survey wouldn't put you in the top 1 percent—but it would put you in the top 2.5 percent.
It's a reminder that talking about taxing "the rich" may make people think of very different things if we don't specify just who counts as rich; the hypothetical individual making $150,000 may be the median considered rich in this poll, but unless he or she is married to someone making at least $100,000, it's not an income there's been serious talk of about raising taxes on in the name of taxing the rich. It's a reminder to the people who go on television to talk about the prospect of raising taxes on individuals making $200,000 or households making $250,000 that you and everyone you know may make that much, but that doesn't make it the basic survival income as far as most Americans are concerned. It's a gut check: If you saw $150,000 and thought "that's middle class, not rich," you're right that there's a huge difference between someone making $150,000 and the kind of rich people for whom this country is effectively run—but you need to remember that to half the people in this country, $150,000 is pretty damn rich. And if you saw $60,000 and thought "yeah, that would do it," you need to remember that $60,000 looks a lot like poverty to people in the top 1 percent.
In the same poll, Gallup asked how much savings in "cash, stocks, real estate, and other investments" people would need to consider themselves rich. The median was $1 million, but here too we see an enormous range: 13 percent gave answers of less than $100,000. Another 9 percent said $100,000.