It's not clear how that makes inequality sound any better.
> For most of the population, their actual worth is stored in their human capital.
What does that even mean?
> Cars is such a weird dimension of inequality.
How so? Cars are freedom. Almost everything in life is more difficult without a car. It's difficult to shop. Difficult to find a good job and commute to that job. Difficult to move to a better city with more jobs and/or housing.
I was able to buy my first car before saving up the full amount for it. I was able to buy my first house (and later our current house) without saving the full amount.
Debt, used properly, can be a very useful and productive tool. Banning debt doesn't help all poor people and surely hurts many of them.
Nobody mentioned or suggested banning debt.
The problem for the bottom 40% isn't that they're spending too much; the problem is "their current resources", which are negligible.
If you're borrowing to buy a car you could never afford to impress your neighbor, that's probably not a good idea. If you've just had a kid and can't afford to pay cash for a car that has room for a seat and you have the choice of saving up for three years to buy one, or taking a 36 month loan now, then that interest is probably excellent value for money.
We start our lives in debt to the bank, and the bank ends up in debt to us - the "zero" point is actually not that interesting.
> What does that even mean?
for a person with no savings, i.e. no investments, it means that income from their wages is all the income they have.
if you have $500,000 invested in the stock market, you would expect income on average to be 7% of that per year, or $35,000. It's a nice boost to your income, but probably not enough to quit your job. If you job also paid you $35,000 a year, we could say that 50% of your worth is in your human capital because your wages are half of your income stream so it's pointing out an equivalency between an investment that returns $35K a year and a job that returns $35K a year. Other than literally being a value judgement, it's not a value judgement.
That's clear enough, but income, regardless of source, is already figured into net worth.
Whereas the OP seems to be talking about net worth being a bad measure, and instead there's some amorphous "actual worth" that's "stored" somewhere (obviously not in a bank account or other investment).