Thanks everyone. I am late in my working career, so for me what's normal may seem different to someone in their teens or twenties. A paid-off home in the developed world has a median price around $400K, and additional savings for retirement of about the same amount seems pretty normal. So, I'm perfectly fine with people having wealth of $1M.
Conversation
Notices
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:04:41 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:11:40 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
At $10M, we transition from comfort to luxury. A second home, or a third; expensive hobbies like sailing or horses; first-class flights and expensive hotels as the norm; enough liquid assets that you can live off of capital instead of working. This seems like a level of wealth that someone could enjoy the fruits of personally. I feel like it's maybe a problem to live this way in a world where children are starving, but maybe just over the line.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:13:21 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
By $100M, it stops being possible to enjoy it personally. A second home is a joy, but a 10th home is mostly theoretical. This feels like the level at which wealth stops being for personal benefit and starts being an abstract instrument of power.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:21:39 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
So I think my answer is around $10M.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:24:55 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
Quick breakdown for US people:
$1M - about 15% of the population
$10M - 1%
$100M - 0.01% -
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:25:28 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax proposal starts at $50M:
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:26:57 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
I think there are other answers here. That it's unethical to hoard any wealth when even one person is without food or shelter, for example.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:29:10 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
I asked this question because Tom Steyer, billionaire candidate for California governor, was recently asked if billionaires should exist. At least for progressives in the US, this has become a settled question: no. Billionaires are a sign of a dysfunctional economic system. It made me think, for myself, that if I'm ok making judgments about others' personal wealth, what is my boundary between ok and not ok levels of wealth? Thus my answer.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:34:58 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
It's interesting to me that my boundaries seem to be around use value. A vacation home you use regularly seems more acceptable to me than a property you own for tax purposes that sits unoccupied. I realize there are a lot of other questions around wealth, but this seems to be the important one for me. There is a level of wealth at which no one person or household could reasonably enjoy the use of that wealth.
-
Embed this notice
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸 (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:44:51 JST
Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸
@majorlinux yes, framing the question in terms of personal wealth instead of system-wide wellbeing is probably the first mistake!
-
Embed this notice
Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers (majorlinux@toot.majorshouse.com)'s status on Wednesday, 27-May-2026 22:44:52 JST
Marcus "MajorLinux" Summers
@evan I think, instead of focusing on wealth, we should look at affordability and sustainability.
How can the collective live prosperously without the need of some sort of accumulation?
-
Embed this notice