Young people tend to have less assets than old people. Graduate from college with the median debt (~30K) and now you have net negative worth for a while. But th

Young people tend to have less assets than old people. Graduate from college with the median debt (~30K) and now you have net negative worth for a while. But this does not mean you're poor, and it certainly correlates with much higher net worth when older. Buy a car, which now has immediately lost value (in general), and you may have negative net worth for some time. But this is not bad, nor is it long term poor. As such, I don't think wanting everyone's net worth to be the average value of a car is realistic. Maybe averaged over a lifetime, or some such non-time-static metric would be better.