I think the issue that this metric doesn’t measure is that there are households with debt. And there are many that don’t even keep credit card debt.
So the metric to measure “working class burden” (or whatever) is the percent increase in consumer, non-housing debt for people who had debt.
Well off people who went from $0 credit card debt to $0 while having their networth double since 2020 (high gdp) are not very useful to predict bankruptcy or political upheaval like people who went from $5k to $40k in credit card debt, are renting so didn’t see their networth go up and had their wages increase 5-10%. Those people are having a really rough time. And are worse off now day to day, and have increased exposure to risky negative events.
So the metric to measure “working class burden” (or whatever) is the percent increase in consumer, non-housing debt for people who had debt.
Well off people who went from $0 credit card debt to $0 while having their networth double since 2020 (high gdp) are not very useful to predict bankruptcy or political upheaval like people who went from $5k to $40k in credit card debt, are renting so didn’t see their networth go up and had their wages increase 5-10%. Those people are having a really rough time. And are worse off now day to day, and have increased exposure to risky negative events.