[expat_panama]

...investment income stream which could be seen as a raise and a bonus one gives to oneself, without having to beg for it. If there is enough of it one could even do without a paycheck at all.

You win the prize as the smartest poster on this thread!  This article is a typical loony bush-basher hit-piece.  The Cron is always hot to trot on finding bad news and one of their favorite after dinner whines is finding some wage stat that shows a drop.  They just loooove to hold it up as 'proof' that Americans are all going broke.

The fact is that family wealth and personal income are at all time highs and it just doesn't matter if the Chron is able to find some wages actually went down.  Reality is (like you pointed out) that more and more Americans are getting rich on other incomes.

[expat_panama]

Dang Diana, you beat me to it again.

That's OK, I've always been partial to fast women.

[GSlob]

To tell the truth, I would not call it "rich", just getting to the [a bit lower, but still coveted] status of "person of independent means". But that would be a matter of definitions. The statuses have to be defined independently from time and place. Something along the lines: "rich" - somebody who could afford upper-class lifestyle [whatever passes for it] without having to work for it. Rich could be somebody with two loincloths when everyone else is having one or goes naked.
"independent"-somebody who could afford middle-class lifestyle [whatever passes for it] without having to work for it.
OTOH, one could not have a society with everybody the upper class [or millionaire, or whatever] in it - nobody would be there to drive a septic truck or to flip burgers. Thus such a society would immediately suffer frightening hyperinflation.