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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

It’s not just that though. It’s also because a lot of people with $0 or subzero wealth have reasonable incomes, and a lot of people with a small but positive amount of wealth have very little income (China in particular). The overall well-being depends more on income including the imputed value of social services, not the stock of wealth.

Wealth comparisons generally are fraught even besides this. The most valuable asset of the average human, by far, is their human capital. These and social services and purchasing power parities can be measured and compared for a more meaningful result, and highlight the truly poor, but this piece isn’t it. It’s just agitprop.

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> The overall well-being depends more on income including the imputed value of social services, not the stock of wealth.

That's an assumption that needs to be backed up.

Many high-net worth individuals have almost zero nominal income - yet they are still extremely wealthy, enjoy a high standard of living and have significant influence. This can make income-only "wealth" statistics look a lot more balanced than the reality is.

On the other hand, debt absolutely has an effect on your quality of living and the degree of freedom you have in your decisions. E.g., if someone barely manages to pay off a mortgage, they will have little disposable income for other expenses, such as medical emergencies - even though, on the face of it, they may have a decent middle-class income.

Just take expected value of everything including work, just like you evaluate assets. That is the most balanced approach. So a guy making 100k a year has a higher expected networth than a guy having 500k in wealth, but the guy with 500k in wealth still has significantly more than a person with 10k a year in income.

This is somewhat beside the point since income inequality is also very high and growing.

Combining them and crystallizing future income into a theoretical asset wont materially affect the picture.

>The most valuable asset of the average human, by far, is their human capital

Yes, and if you are a doctor saving lives with a high income and high negative wealth that human capital is being parasitically extracted via the rent you pay, via student loan repayments, via eye watering malpractice insurance rates and laundered via the financial system to make somebody else even richer.

Dont you see how this makes it even worse? The greater wealth inequality grows the less you get to keep the output of your own human capital.

And yea, maybe you can still do all of that and live a decent enough life. That isnt the point.

This isnt a revolt against productivity. It's a revolt against parasites.

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