4 ms·

Doctors, lawyers, business executives are closer to "regular people" than those people are to billionaires.

• googlryas 11mo ago
  Okay, but it doesn't mean they're regular people. Owning a single one of those plots out them in the 1% of household net worth, even if they had 0 other assets.
  • xmprt 11mo ago
    Ok but what does that contribute to the conversation? I think a good enough definition for regular people is if the average person can achieve that title with talent and hard work more than luck (not that luck doesn't also play a major factor). Whereas becoming a billionaire has a lot more to do with luck than hard work (even though hard work still plays a factor).
• foxyv 11mo ago
  Billionaires are so rich that dermatologists and plastic surgeons look like old man Carl from "Up." Welcome to the oligarchy!
• potato3732842 11mo ago
  The gulf between well paid white collar workers and regular people is so massive which is "closer" depends mostly on which billionaire you're measuring.
  • cycomanic 11mo ago
    That doesn't pass the smell test. Outside the inflated prices paid by Zuckerberg the houses were worth around $4 million, which likely would be around be most their main net worth (let's say it is 5 million). The median net worth in the US is $200k so let's call the the cut off for "regular person" (by that definition >95% of people on HN would not be regular). So the gap from the millionaires here to "regular people" is a factor of 25, in contrast the factor to the smallest billionaire is 200, so no what you say is simply false.