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Comment by mlsu | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed this as well, and yes it hasn't always been this way.

My theory is that we are simply too wealthy. For the average rich person (the top 20-30%), the first $70,000 goes to real companies who sell real things for money. Past that and it all is just kinda funny money. In our society there are actually a ton of people making this kind of money, so there's just this huge chunk of money that isn't really tied to anything real. If you lose $100k on cryptocurrency, or you spend $800 on some metaverse thing, it's fine, you can still buy food.

Of course this is also why people who don't make this kind of money are so baffled (and angry). Hearing that some no product company [1] was sold for billions of dollars feels insane when you're seriously considering the difference between a $5000 and a $6000 car.

[1] (https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/)

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> If you lose $100k on cryptocurrency, or you spend $800 on some metaverse thing, it's fine, you can still buy food.

20 - 30% cannot spend $100k per year as funny money, that is more like the top 5% but probably more like the top 2%.

High earners in the 20 - 30% often also live in expensive areas, so their dollar doesn't go as far as some of the more affordable places to live (housing, food, etc).

The parent comment just shows how most people do not understand how inequal the US actually is. I'd recommend to try this: https://wid.world/income-comparator/US/

If you make a yearly gross salary of 100K you're already in the top 11%. With 200K you're in the top 3%. Inequality also leads to social segregation, which means that we live in bubbles where most people are "like us" and it's very difficult to see how privileged we actually are.

Read Piketty's "Capital in the XXI century" to learn more about how crazy inequal the world, but specially the US, is becoming. Phenomena like Trump are easier to understand when taking this into account.

There is some nuance to it though, the average monthly car payment is $700! Only 10% are under $400.

With the median income ~$50k and many households owning two cars... much of the country is actively living beyond their means just to get to work.

We have built some sort of pseudo-luxury economy that seemingly has to be upkept by mandatory good vibes.

> My theory is that we are simply too wealthy.

Maybe 0.1% to 1% of us are, but the rest of us aren't.

I think it's more insidious than the top 1%, what % of americans buy some frivolous overpriced coffee or cookie regularly? viral beverages like prime? the absurdity of ordering mcdonalds via uber eats?

income inequality is wild right now, but even lower classes are participating in some absurd sort of money grabs regularly...

the top of the market, these billion dollar companies that have perfected this sort of private equity capitalism have optimized every day luxury that can bleed anyone dry... not just the rich... wework or wish go down the tubes and it's on to the next one, founders rocket off and some unlucky investors are stuck holding the bag

every category of daily life now has some optimized extraction mechanism

Nah. The top 10 percent of US households make $190,000 per year. That is simply a lot more money than a household strictly needs. At that point, your Roth IRA is maxed out, you own a home, and you still have thousands every single paycheck to play with.

Funny money.

This tracks with a report[1] that nearly half of consumer spending now comes from the top 10%.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp50...

Wealth inequality is intensely fractal, at every level it is enormous: someone at the 90th %ile household (there are 15 million of these), making 178k (1), can mostly imagine what someone at the 97th %ile, making 350k, would live like (there are 4.6 million of these), but someone at the 99th %, making 663k would be harder to imagine, and someone at the 99.9th %ile, making 3.2 million a year is basically impossible, and the 1500 taxpaying units at the 99.99th %ile, making 85 million a year is simply out of the frame of reality.

1: All stats are 2022 tax year, and are AGI per tax return, so excluding things like 401(k), based on https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-stat... and defining household as "taxpaying unit"- e.g. married filing separately would count as two, at two separate levels of income

Wealth inequality; too much of the wealth that exists is concentrated where it is worth the least.

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