Sure by these measures I'm rich, but I don't feel that way. Our current income isn't really indicative of the whole picture. Since I was diagnosed as Bi-Polar 20 years ago, I have averaged 2 months of unemployment per year, and just spent 13 months without income due to my inability to cope with the stress of the world.

Today I'm rich. Tomorrow I could be living in a van for 6 months like I did after the 2001 bubble burst.

I think it's helpful to consider that just because you are upper class does not necessarily imply that you are rich.

I know plenty of people with upper class hobbies. I couldn't say for sure if they are rich, but they certainly don't live a lifestyle that I was ever familiar with growing up.

Even taking a year off to de-stress... Someone without financial means couldn't make those choices.

And I've known bipolar people too. They worked when they could, and went on disability when they couldn't. They were never rich. Even when they worked, they were always struggling.

I'd never met anyone taking about buying a house in the Spanish hills until becoming a techie.

> I'd never met anyone taking about buying a house in the Spanish hills until becoming a techie.

I'm still not sure that's the differentiating factor here. OP made clear their moral objections, and sketched out part of a picture in which what makes this possible is not so much "typical tech money", but possibly "having owned a home in the US for long enough".

I have extremely non-tech but upper-middle class friends who in the past have discussed buying entire villages in Spain and Italy (they can be had for as little as $2-300k on the low end. These are not people who ever made "a lot of money", but they have owned homes for long enough that if they sold their house, they'd have capital to put into such a move.