The people described here have a different mentality. They get rich by avoiding risks and cutting costs. It is a slow and systematic process with guaranteed results.

Startup people get rich by taking big risks and working hard to increase their top-line productivity and wealth-creation. It is relatively fast and chaotic process with unpredictable results.

But I'll go one further and suggest there's a causal link in play here: The half that are business owners are people who make their money precisely in businesses that don't scale. They own and operate local businesses which are natural geographic monopolies and they don't get crushed by large multinational competitors because of that fact. For example, these are businesses like landscaping companies, local shops, construction contractors, and services businesses.

Also note that a chunk of the 50% that don't own businesses are well-paid, sometimes independent professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers. Again, their source of income does not scale, so they get rich by cutting costs.

10 Million households have $1 million+. There are an estimated 111,162,259 households in the US...

This is upper class wealth...just not completely elite levels of wealth. I think the point of the article is that people with upper class levels of wealth tend to have upper-middle class lifestyles.

You're right that upper middle class people have the same lifestyles as upper class. The difference isn't in material goods, it's in freedom.

The interesting component of the article was that the average income of somebody with $1 million of net worth was approaching $400,000. This implies a poor savings rate and not very much savings at all.

If freedom is the goal, it seems the key component is a modest lifestyle.