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Comment by simianwords | Hacker News Reader

This is misleading. It counts debt as negative. This means a person who has zero wealth and zero debt will have more wealth than bottom 5% of people cumulatively (their wealth cancels out due to debt).

It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined. But that’s what this headline and report are doing.

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It's even more than the bottom 5% if you only look at the US. 13 million or 10.4% of US households have negative net worth according to [1]. I've seen articles claiming that the bottom 15-25% of US Americans have negative net worth. So I am richer than all these households combined. Technically true, but completely misleading.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/13-million-american-household...

This is really surprising low to me. Does it perhaps exclude mortgages on primary domiciles?

How else to do it? Don't count debt at all and pretend that if you've borrowed money, you're rich? Calculate EV of that debt - but how and on what timeframe?

Let’s first agree that it’s misleading. A new born baby has more wealth than bottom 1 million peoples wealth cumulatively according to this metric. That’s ridiculous.

Time is money, and newborn baby has shitload of time.

Perfect answer!

Counting debt makes the poorest person in the world being richer than the poorest 1% combined. That is ridiculous to say, because we intuitively don't read that with negative wealth in mind so you create these very misleading headlines.

>It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined

Using a word exactly as you should is not misleading.

People simply have a bad conception of wealth in their head.

But in reality saying that a single person just born is indeed wealthier than someone in debt: that's how it works.

single person just born is indeed wealthier than someone in debt is exactly right. based on my Pre-K Math 0 is greater than -X :)

The poorest 1% have more wealth than the poorest 5%. But they would never write that in an article since they have an agenda.

poorest 1% have $10 while poorest 5% have $9? not newsworthy :)

It’s only “misleading” if you’re so out of touch that you don’t know a substantial portion of the population is in crippling debt.

There’s nothing misleading about the fact that negative net worth is worse than zero. And a person without debt factually does have far more wealth than 10 million people in debt.

Using your logic, a person in debt living in a nice house driving a nice car is worse than a homeless person without any debt.

Another example of your logic, any MD with a huge student debt is worse off than pretty much everyone in undeveloped world?

Or a person with a business loan but a successful business.

"Using your logic" is almost always an overreach that uncharitably extrapolates and puts words in a person's mouth, and this case is no different.

You used a generalization to attack the format of the message rather than its content.

If I rephrased it to a question about their thoughts how degree holders fit their model then suddenly it would be fine?

Real estate, automobiles, credentials/degrees, and businesses are all assets that would counterbalance their debt. (Credentials and degrees are not liquid, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that a doctor's license isn't worth many dollars).

The much more likely situation is a person with no assets or money and some credit card debt. Indeed, a person with simply no money is better off than such a person.

Right, and they're arguing that the quoted statistic isn't counting credentials and degrees as assets, because there's not a convention for how to value them.

You're arguing that accounting is misleading, your argument is that we can ignore the balance and count only the assets column. A summation of assets ignoring liabilities is not a measure of wealth.

>It would be misleading to suggest that a single person with zero wealth has more wealth than 100k people’s wealth combined.

It wouldn't be misleading. You may have to explain it to somebody who has absolutely no understanding of how finance works, but that doesn't make the statement misleading.

It's not misleading, in fact it's how accounting/balance sheets work.

A new born baby with zero asset and zero liability has thus a net financial worth of 0, which is obviously more than someone indebted.

A headline like “new born baby has more wealth than bottom 1 million people cumulatively” is not a misleading tittle?

Not if you understand what "wealth" means, as per previous comment.

Your headline could be rephrased as "Someone who has a balance of 0 is wealthier than someone $100 overdraft" and you wouldn't blink.

Check the current headline

Unless the baby was born into more debt than those people, no. It’s a fact that the baby is wealthier than they are. A substantial portion of our population is in debt. This is a fact.

What are you even questioning here??

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