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This is an incredibly misleading statistic because they use NET wealth, which means that they subtract your debt from your wealth. That means that if you have m

by OskarS 10y ago

This is an incredibly misleading statistic because they use NET wealth, which means that they subtract your debt from your wealth. That means that if you have more debt than wealth (not necessarily a bad thing), you have negative wealth. This is the case for roughly 40% of the world's population. This means that, by the same metric used in this headline, your average groundhog or newborn baby has more "wealth" than the poorest 2.85 billion people in the world. It's also the same metric Donald Trump used in that story his daughter liked to tell, about him walking past a homeless person and saying "that guy is 700 million dollars richer than me". Income and wealth inequality is a huge problem, but stats like these are incredibly misleading and shouldn't be used to make the argument.

aluhut 10y ago
> This means that, by the same metric used in this headline, your average groundhog or newborn baby has more "wealth" than the poorest 2.85 billion people in the world. But isn't that true? If you are not born into a family that will give you a huge dept and a second mortgage on the house, you are better of.
- tjansen 10y ago
  No, not necessarily. Cash flow matters more than debt. Spending all the money that you earn and keeping your net worth at 0 is actually a great way to live (at least until you retire). Being born into a family with huge debt is likely giving you above average income potential. I'd rather be worrying about being born into the family with just a little debt, but struggling to pay it off.
  - aluhut 10y ago
    > Being born into a family with huge debt is likely giving you above average income potential. I don't understand that. A family with a huge dept is a badly managed family. How can there be anything good coming from that?
    - tjansen 10y ago
      In order to get huge debt you need to be able to demonstrate a high income potential, high enough to convince the creditor to lend you that kind of money. If you have huge debt, it's likely you can pay it off sooner or later. Also, you won't get it as an uneducated working class family. The background of a huge debt family usually results in an above-average income for the offspring.
      - aluhut 10y ago
        I don't really need to demonstrate anything with credit cards looking to the US for example. Thinking of those nasty dept packages that got so prominent 2008.

by OskarS 10y ago

aluhut 10y ago

> This means that, by the same metric used in this headline, your average groundhog or newborn baby has more "wealth" than the poorest 2.85 billion people in the world. But isn't that true? If you are not born into a family that will give you a huge dept and a second mortgage on the house, you are better of.

tjansen 10y ago
No, not necessarily. Cash flow matters more than debt. Spending all the money that you earn and keeping your net worth at 0 is actually a great way to live (at least until you retire). Being born into a family with huge debt is likely giving you above average income potential. I'd rather be worrying about being born into the family with just a little debt, but struggling to pay it off.
- aluhut 10y ago
  > Being born into a family with huge debt is likely giving you above average income potential. I don't understand that. A family with a huge dept is a badly managed family. How can there be anything good coming from that?
  - tjansen 10y ago
    In order to get huge debt you need to be able to demonstrate a high income potential, high enough to convince the creditor to lend you that kind of money. If you have huge debt, it's likely you can pay it off sooner or later. Also, you won't get it as an uneducated working class family. The background of a huge debt family usually results in an above-average income for the offspring.
    - aluhut 10y ago
      I don't really need to demonstrate anything with credit cards looking to the US for example. Thinking of those nasty dept packages that got so prominent 2008.