3 ms·

It sounds like the best measure would be neither wealth nor income, but expenditure...

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• notahacker 6y ago
  As a measure of lifestyle, to a degree. Although the anomalies are obvious: the upkeep costs of a lavishly appointed London mansion a multimillionaire owns are certainly lower than the rental on a much smaller flat (and probably a fair bit less than the property appreciates in value). And wealth is a source of power and claim on future spending. The average person spending $100k per annum does not have the capacity to decide nobody in his family need ever work again like Warren Buffett could, never mind his power to move markets.
• yyy888sss 6y ago
  I'd say what matters is whether you can afford something and all, and then to a lesser extent the quality of that good/service. For example, most people in the US can at least afford a cheap used car, and can therefore go pretty much anywhere. Of course, it's nicer to have a Bentley, but a luxury car still sits in the same traffic and has to obey the same speed limits as everyone else. In the developing world however, the rich always have cars, but many normal people can not afford one at all.
• Jedd 6y ago
  Usufruct makes this a difficult & poor measure, also. Even well-off (but far from wealthy) people - think contractors on say USD$200-500k / year - can architect their financial arrangements via a Pty Ltd / LLC to minimise on-paper income as well as expenditure. Enjoying full use of an asset to which you, personally, have no ownership and no cost of maintenance, confounds assessments of this demographic all the way through to the private-jet crowd.