I read that as an example to illustrate a point: it could also have said debt of $1000 with a debt ratio of 0.1 which is still pretty resilient.

That was exactly my point...a million dollars of debt is astronomical for the majority of people, but adding another data point such as DTA or DTI would make for a clearer picture of what the debt load actually is. Its like putting down a 100kg kettle bell and asking a group of people "is it hard to lift"? For the average person sure...but you're going to get a variety of answers if you put that kettle bell in front of kids vs a group of gym rats.

Edit: I guess a smaller amount like 10k USD might be better to illustrate the point.

I think my point was more that 1 million dollars of debt is a pretty large sum to most people, but not much to someone who has substantial assets. You can draw up "that's only true" scenarios on basically any situation, so its not very helpful to go back and forth.

I will say the point about having debt limits your future possibilities is very true, and if someone would like to maintain an open future, stay away from large amounts of debt(homes, expensive cars, boats, etc...)

I did not get that assumption from "The more debt you have, the less financially resilient you are". Debt is an absolute value, and debt-to-asset ratio is...not. You can also evaluate debt loads by debt-to-income ratio, which is not to be overlooked as most homeowners buy homes based on their income, rather than their savings. As others have said, debt-to-asset is also not a golden ratio, because if your assets are not liquid and you get called for your debt, you still have a bad situation.

Very true, I think the article is pretty high level, and so are my comments. Actual financial health can be difficult to evaluate given that world events are pretty open ended and anything can happen.