> The image in my head (from movies and books and reading [about] Piketty) is that the wealthy in earlier eras were more idle, living off rents rather than incomes.
Indeed, this is exactly what it meant to be a gentleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman) in 15th-19th century English/American society -- you owned enough land to be able to live off rents, rather than having to dirty your hands working for a living. Gentlemen were part of the broader upper class called the gentry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry), which also included titled aristocrats (barons, dukes, earls, etc.). Since making money and buying land were generally easier than convincing the King to give you a title, becoming a gentleman was a popular way for ambitious commoners to move up the social ladder. (The flip side of that ease, of course, being that it was easy to stop being a gentleman, too -- just lose your money and boom, your family is common again -- whereas a titled peer would always be a titled peer, even if he was penniless.)
> I imagine servants would have been more of a status symbol for them, whereas today's upper-middle-class strivers see them as more of a necessity "to dedicate more time to working."
Partly it was a status symbol for them, but status symbols were a bigger deal to them than they are to us because their societies were more rigidly hierarchical than ours are. So having ways to display your status was part of how you held on to that status -- gentlemen had servants, because if you couldn't afford servants that told everyone you really weren't a gentleman. It was self-reinforcing.
Indeed, this is exactly what it meant to be a gentleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman) in 15th-19th century English/American society -- you owned enough land to be able to live off rents, rather than having to dirty your hands working for a living. Gentlemen were part of the broader upper class called the gentry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry), which also included titled aristocrats (barons, dukes, earls, etc.). Since making money and buying land were generally easier than convincing the King to give you a title, becoming a gentleman was a popular way for ambitious commoners to move up the social ladder. (The flip side of that ease, of course, being that it was easy to stop being a gentleman, too -- just lose your money and boom, your family is common again -- whereas a titled peer would always be a titled peer, even if he was penniless.)
> I imagine servants would have been more of a status symbol for them, whereas today's upper-middle-class strivers see them as more of a necessity "to dedicate more time to working."
Partly it was a status symbol for them, but status symbols were a bigger deal to them than they are to us because their societies were more rigidly hierarchical than ours are. So having ways to display your status was part of how you held on to that status -- gentlemen had servants, because if you couldn't afford servants that told everyone you really weren't a gentleman. It was self-reinforcing.