Mag Wealth
In the human world, wealth inequality arguably has more of an impact on lives and relationships than physical differences like distance and energy. We need to have meaningful discussions about structural class differences, and segmenting the population based on wealth is an obvious starting point.
Net Worth Generally, someone’s wealth level can be inferred from their net worth. “Net worth” is an unfortunate term, because a human’s “worth” is obviously more than just their wealth. But also, “assets minus liabilities” offers some large shadows to hide behind. For instance, someone who has a billion dollars in assets and a billion dollars debt may have a low net worth, but they are clearly operating at a much higher wealth level. So a better quantity to measure would be: the amount of money someone could bring to bear on a problem if they had to. If someone they loved fell deathly ill, but the treatment would cost some large amount of money, how much could they pull together in a month or two? How much could they borrow, and from whom, and on what terms? With this in mind, someone’s wealth level can generally be determined with a short interview and assessment of their lifestyle. Wealth, not income Traditionally when talking about money as it relates to social class, people refer to an income bracket, like “making six figures”. Income is a reasonable proxy for wealth in the middle classes, but in Mag World, when creating a primary scale for some unit, we’re looking for the base quantity, like “distance” (m); not a rate, like “speed” (m/s). In economic terms, a “stock”, not a “flow”. Income is a rate, and would be on a compressed (half-mag) scale.
Wealth, like most quantities, doesn’t need precision beyond the exponent to expose some sharp differences between wealth classes, and sharp similarities within a wealth class.
It’s not useful to compare relative wealth within a wealth level, except perhaps to say “lower” (at risk of falling to a lower level) or “upper” (the next level higher is within reach). For wealth specifically, using any further precision easily leads to direct wealth comparisons between members of the same level, which then leads to jealousy and discontent, rather than insight into the core issue.
General scale
For the quantitative treatment, we need to anchor the scale, but using exact values is not possible due to inflation. On a mag scale, inflation happens pretty slowly (↑1.5 from 1900-2025 in the US–about 30x), but this consistent drift can’t be ignored, even in Mag World.
This scale is calibrated on US dollars in the early 1980s; this aligns with some basic cultural expectations around wealth. For instance, that a dollar can still buy something useful, and that a “millionaire” is considered wealthy. To translate 2024 US dollars into mag wealth, divide by 3 (or ↑0.5).
All dollar values are given in 2024 US dollars for convenience.
Wealth Levels
... continue reading