Writing for the outlet, Andrew Lisa explained that Americans hold a combined $160.35 trillion in wealth. To the average person, that sounds like quite the payday, but someone in the top 1% probably wouldn’t see it that way. According to Lisa, “The bottom 50% of the country shares less than 3% of that enormous pie, while the most fortunate 10% gorge on nearly all of it.”
There are approximately 340.11 million people in the U.S. If they all shared that $160.35 trillion, each person would come away with $471,465. Not only is that more than the average person could even imagine, but it only compounds when you consider how it would add up for families. For example, a couple would hold a combined $942,930, and a family of four would have $1.89 million. Because, of course, in an ideal world, wealth would be distributed evenly regardless of age.
I’d argue if all houses were redistributed to their rightful owners the price of all housing would go down - but that’s outside of this thought experiment I guess.
Remember though that that’s ~500k per person. So every kid, every SO, every parent. I think on average it would equate to more than just getting to own your home, even if we ignored the likely change in wealth valuations that would follow.
Okay, so, a house in California with no mortgage.
I’m not saying this would be a bad thing, just that this isn’t “more than most people could imagine” kind of wealth. Maybe more than most people will experience in their lifetimes… but imagine?
Ask any 10-year-old what they’d do with $1M and somewhere between their personal butler, building a rocket ship and bringing dinosaurs back you will find the limits of human imagination quickly outpace the confines of $1M.
Chico, Fresno and Burbank. Not in California, even.
Sure, I guess you’re arguing semantics in which case have at it. Yes, people can imagine a lot more than what 1M would buy. Yes, most people won’t realistically earn 1M in their lifetime. Sure, the article had at least a single line that should be reworded.
The median lifetime earnings for all workers in the US are approximately $1.7 million.
Would you like me to change the number in my reply to 2M? Again, this feels like semantics - although to your credit at least this is something worth correcting. It’s good to recalibrate statistics, “US people make more than a million dollars over their lifetime”.
But it doesn’t change the fact that this article brings up a useful thought experiment, the top reply in this chain added nothing of value to that conversation which I think can be destructive, and I was attempting to point that out in the hopes of improving comment culture on Lemmy.
I don’t care what you do but you said the above, not the person you were replying to. That’s why I replied to you, not them.
Your point is equally valid without incorrect information in it. You seem very defensive about being fact checked; I figured I’d save anyone else who was curious the 5 seconds it took me to check your figure.
^ The person I responded to said “maybe more than most people will experience in their lifetime.” And then referenced $1M. I was simply anchoring to their value colloquially like you would in casual conversation.
I’m not trying to come off as defensive, I apologize. I responded to a comment that felt like it laser focused on one sentence within the article, only to be responded to by you with again what felt like a laser focused comment about one sentence. You weren’t like “by the way, the median lifetime earnings of an American is badadadada. [Insert your thoughts on my comment], but I just wanted to correct your quoted value.” Which would have made your comment’s point more clear to me, you just dropped a random correction that wasn’t super relevant to the point I was trying to make or even the point of this thread.
I praised you for correcting that value in the thing you responded to.
Again, I apologize for coming off as defensive that was not my intention. I appreciate the calibration of casual figures, that’s good for everyone (and something I particularly appreciate).