Conversely, roughly 10%+ of the US has a negative net worth, ie, they owe more debt than they have assets.

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p70br-202.pdf

And I say 10%+ because this is from 2022, and in general, credit scores have been nose diving and car/home loan delinquencies and tenant evictions have been skyrocketing, since 2022.

We've also got roughly ~40% at least using BNPL for something.

We also know that ... having a negative net wealth is, while not exclusive to poorer people/households in terms of their yearly income... it is much, much more strongly correlated with that.

Though this may change in 'fun' ways now that the housing market is collapsing, bye bye remnants of the 'middle class'!

So anyway, I think a more realistic number for uh... people who are worse than living paycheck to paycheck, people who are actually living paycheck to loan repayment...

Its somewhere between ~10% and ~40%.

... Which is still really fucking bad, as that means something aporoximating a quarter of society sre now just literally debt slaves.

...

So basically, we have:

A ~20% debt slave class,

A ~50% exploited and struggling worker class (who is often in total denial about this being the case),

A ~25% petitie bougeois, decently paid worker / small business owner class (who routinely gaslights and belittles everyone below them, and aspirationally sucks off and praises those above them),

A ~5% capitalist owner class, that gets astonishingly more powerful and wealthy as you increment up each percent and then tenth of a percent, etc.