You're making the mistake that OP was warning of, which is conflating a stock and a flow. If you want to talk about people's purchasing power, do that. If you

You're making the mistake that OP was warning of, which is conflating a stock and a flow. If you want to talk about people's purchasing power, do that. If you want to talk about people's wealth, do that. Conflating the two just leads to confusion and erroneous conclusions. And in case it's not obvious, consider: Person A just graduated with a law degree from Harvard; they have negative net wealth. Person B is a retiree who lost their retirement savings in a Ponzi scheme; they still have a fair chunk of equity left in their house, but they've already got two mortgages Which one do you think is going to have trouble buying food? Amartya Sen won a Nobel for helping point out how misleading a simplistic analysis can be here.