• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    if you own a million dollars US or more - you’re one of the top 1%, richest people on the planet.

    Is an American with a small house in some hyper-inflated corner of the California real estate market really wealthier than a guy out in Malaysia or Nigeria who owes property that’s 1/10th the price but can pay $2/day for an army of laborers?

    I think this puts too much faith in the value of the American dollar relative to the functional value of real estate and human labor trading at a fraction of the price thousands of miles away. Real wealth needs to have some degree of political power behind it. A guy with a $500 rifle who can command a hundred acres of turf and a thousand other people is - in my opinion - substantially wealthier than a guy with a $500,000 condo who owes his continued existence to some Madison Avenue ad agency.