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


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.


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).


Billionaires are so rich that dermatologists and plastic surgeons look like old man Carl from "Up." Welcome to the oligarchy!


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.


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.




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