Its like the new "doctors hate this one weird trick". You're a smart special person for buying something you don't need because the big dumb company made an oopsie and has to sell it to you for cheap.

Redline (2009)

(the answer is yes and it's not even that latent actually I find this incredibly attractive much like I find it extremely cathartic to walk through 2 feet high snow wearing an outfit so dense and warm it could count as bondage)

This same thing happened with people in the financial industry pre-2008, where upper working class people at the height of their careers bought expensive homes with subprime mortgages, then when those home values inverted, found themselves having to re-enter the workforce alongside 20 year olds.

Because these people got paid $250,000 a year and got mcmansions and have aspirations of owning ferraris and starting their own companies, not realizing that they didn't have -real- wealth. They had capital gains from easily outdated tech skills, didn't buy land and now have no long term retirement.

I think there's going to be a wave of psuedomillionaires whose wealth was entirely generated from stock options at tech companies. They will retire between 30-45 years old off that money, blow through it maintaining their lifestyle, and then try to re-enter the workforce at 45 with outdated skills.

Actually upper class people own their homes outright. Their family office investments make >$150,000 in annual capital gains. They make more money not working than most 'suspiciously wealthy' people do at the height of their careers.

Being wealthy means having escape velocity from hardship.

A guy who has a $70,000 BMW lease and a $500,000 mortgage and a $150,000 a year tech job **thinks** he's upper class. But he's spending $8k a month to sustain his life and only putting $1k away in savings. After 20 years of work, he'll only have bought himself about 5 years of survival.

The bare minimum threshold for being truly upper class and not having any financial worries in today's world is having $5-10M in investments/home equity. Anything less than that and you probably need to reduce your standard of living to avoid depleting all of your savings if you stop working.

There are plenty of wealthy people who don't work, don't have much of an income, but they own land, a home, and have enough stock investments that they don't have to work. Most of them inherited that from their parents, who made so much money they could bequeath them to their heirs.