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Comment by teachingassist | Hacker News Reader

> Since poor people's wealth is mostly cash

A reasonable definition of 'poor' is holding no net wealth, or less - which applies to 30-40% of households in Scotland (for example):

https://www.gov.scot/publications/wealth-assets-scotland-200...

So your arguments here don't apply for my understanding of 'poor'. You have to be approaching median wealth before those arguments start to apply, if they do at all.

A poor person is not greatly affected by debasement of their savings in currency, because they don't have any savings.

A poor person is not considering throwing their savings into Bitcoin, because they don't have any savings (beyond essential cash).

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

"The bottom half of the income distribution had a huge share of its wealth tied up in real estate while owning essentially no shares of corporate stock. The top 1 percent, by contrast, wasn't just rich — it was specifically rich in terms of owning companies, both stock in publicly traded ones ("corporate equities") and shares of closely held ones ("private businesses")...So the value of those specific assets — assets that people in the bottom half of the distribution never had a chance to own in the first place — soared.

NPR also reported in 2017 that the bottom 50% of U.S. households (by net worth) have little stock market exposure (neither directly nor indirectly through 401k plans), writing: "That means the stock market rally can only directly benefit around half of all Americans — and substantially fewer than it would have a decade ago, when nearly two-thirds of families owned stock."

A poor person is not greatly affected by debasement of their savings in currency, because they don't have any savings.

Debasement eventually shows up in the form of inflation of consumer goods prices. And inflated housing prices makes it nearly impossible for future generations to ever own a home, depending on the city.

> Debasement eventually shows up in the form of inflation of consumer goods prices

Sure. But nominal price inflation doesn’t matter to the poor as a class, but to those on fixed nominal income (e.g., many retirees, or people dependent on benefit programs with fixed rather than indexed benefit levels.)

Real increases in prices of goods disproportionately in demand at lower income levels matters to the poor, but that’s a different issue than general inflation.

> And inflated housing prices makes it nearly impossible for future generations to ever own a home, depending on the city.

Real increase in housing prices (or, more to the point, increases in housing prices relstive to a particular poor persons income), which has nothing to do with currency debasement/devaluation or general inflation, makes homeownership less accessible.

Real prices have been increasing. They approach bubble territory.

Home price to income ratio: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...

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