[2]https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20141...
- Wealth is not renewable, which is why income is vastly more important. If you have $100 of wealth and you only spend 10% of it a year. You're completely broke a decade. 'Only' spending 5% of your total wealth on transport per year is a path to very rapid ruin.
- There's nowhere near the amount of 'real' wealth as there is 'paper' wealth, which is the number you're indirectly citing. Most wealth is tied up in the form of various investments, stocks, and so on. When you liquidate these assets, it results in a decline in their value. If you were to liquidate large amounts of market assets into spendable money, simultaneously, you would find the total wealth in the US to be a very small fraction of the numbers stated.