I think it has been propagated since then as a different claim that the top 1% had 95% of the increase in all the wealth for the past decade. I don't think there is any evidence for this stronger claim.
[1]: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf
Wealth comparisons are tricky, e.g they'll show that Americans are some of the poorest people in the world because there's a large fraction with debt (e.g homes, credit cards, student loans). While technically true, that doesn't really match our intuitions for what wealth means.
If your finances throughout your life are not in order, if you have high debt, regardless if it's because of medical bills, student loans or too big a car and house, you are in a weak position. What good does a nice car do if you worry about bills and if you try to avoid to look at the balance in your banking app?
You don't always know how rich some folks are, but for the most part it's easy to see if someone is living above their means, if you get a little anxienty on those people's behalf, then good!
John lives in extreme poverty. He's debt free, but is unable to adequately feed himself or his family. Several of his children have died from malnutrition.
Marc lives in a nice suburban home, has 3 square meals a day, so does everyone in his family. However, his debts (including his mortgage, car payments, student loans) exceed his savings.
If our intuition is wrong, then John is winning. He's ahead of Marc financially.
But I can tell you which one of them I'd rather be. It's not John.
- newly purchased $150k home with down-payment of $30k
- $80k savings / investments
- $20k car
- $80k/yr income
This person is not at risk, but they have a net worth of $[30k + 80k +20k - 150k] = $-20k
If you imagine that we are all born in a kind of "debt" where we need a home to live in, then a mortgage is just putting that debt on paper.
As a personal choice, I don't accept any excuse for taking on debt to fund a lifestyle. It is just not a good idea.
I've talked to people who come up with these crazy justifications in their 20s why spending money now is more important than spending money later; I don't know why it is so hard to accept that these decisions have a 20 year time horizons and that they are going to live to be 75. The averages are pretty clear, if you prioritise financial security above incidental expenses you can have both.
Expensive experiences are not worth more than financial security, they don't meaningfully contribute to people's lives or happiness. You can be just as happy playing sports with locals to meet new people as traveling to exotic locations to gawp at nice architecture and meet new people. In 10 years you won't notice if you cooked your own food or had someone else do it for you. An expensive car will not bring a normal person good luck. You can live in a couple of different houses over a lifetime and save much money with little downside.
The pleasure of a purchase is not an urgent need.
If you take your salary and divide it by a reasonable interest rate, then you get the value of yourself as an asset, or the equivalent amount of capital you would need not to work. It is a large amount if you choose a realistic interest rate.
So, sure, a few hundred thousand in debt for school or a house is not such a big deal when you consider that an ordinary salary is equivalent to a million or two in capital.
The issue is cash flow, which seems to be what you are acknowledging, so how do you get to a fanatical anti-debt stance?
I spun a off topic; nickelcitymario's original scenario riled me up. It compared someone with a steady income to someone without an income and concluded that the person with an income had a financial edge because they had debts - that isn't right, the person with the income is ahead because they have an income.
A mortgage, car payments and student loans are luxuries that are not required to make an income; and the people I know with those things tend not to be using them to make money but rather to fund a lifestyle (for reference, I think the wealthiest set of friends I have are not university educated, buy second hand cars and rent - very relaxed lifestyle).
It is a common trope that people misjudge debt, take on too much, turn themselves into debt slaves and then suffer. They misjudge the situation and charge in when they are young and haven't really had time to learn about what makes a person happy. It is annoying that people keep downplaying the costs and risks of debt - it is an expensive, usually long term commitment and it results in ordinary people having less wealth. Wealth is hugely beneficial in strategic and tactical terms.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t saying Marc was better off because of debt. I was saying he was better off despite having debt. I was responding to the specific idea that Americans are poorer than people in other countries because they have more debt. My point was it’s entirely possible (and common) to be better off despite having a negative net worth.
Others spoke to this better than me, though, when discussing cash flow and the like...
Under the assumption that his wages track with inflation, you might be right. He'll be able to scrape and hustle and pivot right until the day he dies. That's not a "win." When his health inevitably falters, he'll have increasing difficulty finding work, accumulating ever more medical debt. Chances are, his children will be dependent on him well into middle age, but "his" house and assets will vanish to cover debts.
A good outcome is one where we're making enough to save up for a comfortable retirement. That's not the reality for, perhaps, most people born after 1980
The entire point of taking out a loan is that you don't have the assets available to outright buy the thing you're taking out the loan for. Obviously, people can take on too much debt, be trapped by usurious interest rates, and so on; you need to be realistic about how much debt you can afford, and a lot of people aren't (often through no fault of their own). But "my total debt at this moment in time exceeds my savings" is not in and of itself a harbinger of financial doom.
Negative net worth just means you can declare bankruptcy when necessary. Positive cash flow is what keeps you out. The risk is that an interruption to that cash flow can mean that you have to take the bankruptcy option.
Not quite the same as having it in-hand, but it’s real unless conditions change drastically.
Both cases are poor examples. Financial health has two components; assets and cash flow. John can be in a better situation if his cash flow is good and he is solvent, but will always be facing more risks if he lacks key assets like a home.
You have a nice car you can drive around?
I mean, the purpose of money is to do things with it. The balance in your banking app is only relevant because you desire to put it to some purpose. If you stop desiring to put it to some purpose, you're equally equipped whether or not you have a positive balance, and if you already have put it to some purpose like a nice car, you've accomplished the actual goal you wanted and should stop getting distracted by the means. (You should, of course, continue to pay attention to the means if you have other, unfulfilled goals. And perhaps you should think about whether having a nice car is more of a priority than those goals. But the goals are not money in and of itself.)
If you've got debts from student loans or mortgages that are set up such that you can pay those debts slowly and in a way you can afford to pay, and in the meantime you've got money to spend, you are actually fine. A balance sheet that only looks at how much is in the bank and how much you're in debt and not at how much you can afford to hold that debt is not telling the full story.
(This is, incidentally, the same reason the national debt isn't a big concern: nobody is going to demand that we pay that debt right now. So going further into debt gives the ability to do more things with that money, i.e., it gives us the effect of having more money, even though on paper we now have less money.)
...If $5,000 is something you could afford, ask yourself the same question again with $100,000 (fire burn down your house?), with $250,000 (cancer treatment and your health insurance kicked you off?). For everyone, there’s some number which is the largest size of a financial shock they could weather.
This number is probably the truest measure of a person’s real wealth: What is the largest unexpected financial shock you could sustain without the cost of that to you suddenly becoming ten times the original cost or more? That number isn’t something easy to calculate; it depends on whether you have a family that can help you out, on your income, on whether that shock involves losing your job (and thus your health insurance, if you live in the US), on whether you have access to any other sources of security (including public assistance)....
https://shift.newco.co/2017/12/04/your-financial-shock-wealt...
Reality is unimportant. Is perception that matters to society.