you first
Iâm sorry - you just said:
âI mean thisâ to me then told me that you donât mean that - that youâre just quoting it and saying you mean it - but you donât mean it.
Iâm not sure what youâre trying to get at here.
If it were up to me, Iâd define wealth in terms of the Buddhist idea of âsuchnessâ, or enlightenment. Where removing obstacles to the self actualization of others is essentual to oneâs own enlightenment.
Basically the personal ideal of love, made public.
Sure thing.
To me someone is wealthy when they have enough revenue and savings to be able to pay for all necesities like Food, Shelter, transportation, healthcare without having to wonder if it will be OK next month. This is my definitions because I was asking about financial wealth as opposed to more meta definitions.
A person who has more resources than the amount required to live a life of comfort and security by the standards of their contemporaries.
Thatâs a solid one. I discussed some formal and semi-formal definitions in another topic, and could get into more detailed discussions about the value of time versus money or Maslowâs pyramid, but yours is what itâs about at the base of things.
Thatâs where Maslowâs pyramid comes in on a societal level. We all benefit when everyoneâs basic needs are taken care of.
In art class the teacher made a big deal about the negative space, the background in balance with the forground. Contrasts between light and dark. It made a lot of sense to me at the time that a full aesthetic appreciation of a thing, look past the thing itself, and consider other stuff thatâs not the thing being labeled.
Seems like economists Iâve heard most from, have paid very little attention to the âbadsâ that accompany âgoodsâ. The abuse that contrasts with services. The way addiction is managed and titrated and carefully dosed in every package.
Itâs weird how all the commercials I see on TV seem to be accomodating covid 19 by insinuating, âwe know how hard things are, but arent you glad you can still buy our product in a cardboard box?â.
Anyway, the title of this thread is a misnomer, I think. Itâs not wealth that people are all that confused about, itâs want/demand that is whatâs being manipulated in some very opaque ways.
They do pay attention, but mask it in the term âexternalitiesâ â especially when theyâre talking about the negative outcomes.
The other group that comes to mind, is insurance companies. Actuarials have a pretty robust language for talking about their bads. Not sure what it would look like, though, for the externalities to be included on the balance sheet in a robust accountable way.
Something that puzzles me lot still, is how and why the infrastructure even exists for individuals to own as much wealth as a country. The guardian economy is not nearly as obvious as, say silicon valley or the oil industry.
Something Iâd like to see discussed, is limiting how much money can be amassed by one person, in a similar way to arms control treaties. But with offshore banking and shell companies, there would be a lot of loopholes to sew shut.
Youâve just described even the âblue collar working classâ of the 1950s-1970s.
What you havenât described is the vast majority of people in the U.S. AT THIS MOMENT who consider themselves âmiddle classâ but even before covid couldnât afford a $500 emergency. Now? Maybe the 0.1%.
Correct, if you live in the US, in the present, and donât have enough savings or credit to cover a $500 financial emergency then you are certainly not wealthy. You should probably also not consider yourself middle class, although that term is almost completely meaningless. If I did not have $500 to cover an emergency as a result of not earning enough to soundly get to that point I would consider myself poor.
That defines the modern middle class. Thatâs the middle two quartiles of the country that cannot cover a $500 emergency expense. Itâs not difficult to define the middle class, unless it is rhetorically inconvenientâŚ
Small quibble: that defines the middle class, but itâs the bottom THREE quartiles that canât afford a $500 emergency expense.
Or at least, thatâs how it was before the pandemic. Now?
> â Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.â
John Steinbeck
What I cant figure out is how â3/4â of the US population of 300 million donât have $500 saved for an emergency and yet apple alone sells 100 million iphones per year in the US.
Credit cards
Donât forget: lots of poor people have refrigerators, too!
True. Did not consider that.
A fridge and a $800 phone are two entirely different animals.