$1 million ain't much anymore

I'm feeling a little bad about not being a billionaire.

I've never had any particular drive to make a billion dollars. I just feel a little left out. I'm constantly reminded of all the money other people have.

My wife and I sat in a Kirkland restaurant one Saturday remarking on all the teenagers driving past in new BMWs — date night with style.

Seattle is saturated with money, but it's not the only place.

Last year, there were 9.3 million millionaires in the United States, 5 percent more than the previous year, according to a market-research report.

Some people are getting richer.

But another recent study found that when you adjust for inflation, young men today make less money on average than their fathers made in the 1970s.

That has to be frustrating.

Our economy is sorting people onto different planes, and those planes are moving apart.

And it takes more money to be comfortably rich.

King County has 68,000 millionaires — people with a million dollars' net worth, not counting their home. The county is No. 10 nationally.

But just as more people get there, a million becomes mediocre money.

Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal has a blog called The Wealth Report. It's always interesting.

In one entry, he reported the Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed raising the floor for a certain kind of power investor from folks who have $1 million to people with $2.5 million. A million is not serious money anymore.

He interviewed millionaires and many said they weren't rich.

I know what they mean. Billionaires, and people whose millions at least run in the double digits, are rich.

It is all perspective.

And ordinary wealthy people have hardships.

Frank reported on a shortage of Ferraris, yachts and personal jets. Too many rich people competing for the same stuff. He predicted the first $100 million home sale would happen before his book on rich people comes out.

The sale happened this month in the Hamptons. His book, "Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich," comes out Tuesday.

It's not bad that some people are doing so well. It's that the gaps are ridiculously large.

A University of California analysis of 2005 IRS data found the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans earned the largest share of the nation's income since before the Depression.

Average income for the bottom 90 percent fell.

The growing separation of the wealthy from everyone else takes some of the wind out of the American Dream.

Examples of success feed the dream, but excess can negate the feeling that anything is possible. That's not good in a democracy. When it comes to voting on a new stadium, for example, my vote vs. Paul Allen's money is no contest.

Wealth is in evidence all around Seattle.

More of us would feel like celebrating it, if it weren't so far away.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.