Which goes to my original statement. "Wealthy" is quite subjective. You telling someone who makes $40K a year that they're "wealthy" surely would elicit the response that you are "utterly disconnected from reality."
People making more than most of the people around them do tend to be unaware of their predicament, that's true, but I don't see the relevance. Telling them "you're wealthy" only to hear "nooooooo ur rong!" is not unexpected (in fact I expect it more often than not). At 40k they're making about 30% more than most of the people around them if the median salary is 30k.
Most people don't like thinking they are wealthy because it shakes their moral stances. This is also why you can watch popular celebrities go from having little or no money to suddenly being millionaires, then, through the power of mental magic, being a millionaire isn't wealthy anymore. "nooooo, I'm not wealthy, it's the billionaires that are the problem!"
NYC is broken up into alot of areas, economically. Taking an average median of the whole city is like averaging all of America then wondering why there are so many poor people in North Carolina.
Manhattan (which I referenced) has a high median compared to
The Bronx, which is 41,000.
Brooklyn is 53,000
Queens is 72,000
Statan island is 85,000
NYC has some crazy ass economic range.
Rich people live next to other rich people in their rich neighborhoods. Do you think I should qualify as not being wealthy because I live in neighborhood of other rich people, Dave? "I'm not rich, I can't be, I only have a 4000 sqft mansion, my neighbor's is 7000 sqft. He's the rich person, not me."
The salaries should absolutely be viewed as one unit and not broken up into rich/poor areas. Someone making $100k/year living in a Manhattan apartment isn't "not wealthy" just because they've chosen to live in a expensive area. A rich man isn't poor just because he chose to buy a Ferrari.