The kill line is arguably the greatest "invention" of certain media outlets.

This chart itself contains no annotations, so all we can tell is that it is related to wealth distribution.

And understanding what the horizontal and vertical axes represent is quite abstract, or difficult for those who haven't seen similar types of charts before.

Therefore, many people interpret the horizontal axis as "health points," and are surprised to find that North Americans (Americans) are almost nonexistent in the 20%~40% range on the horizontal axis.

They then fantasize: once the middle class in the U.S. encounters setbacks and their wealth drops to 40%, they are directly "killed" down to 20% health, skipping the intermediate stages.

The benefit for the American ruling class is that people with 40% health will cause trouble out of dissatisfaction, and will be directly cut down to 20%, leaving them no strength to protest, only to wait for death.

So, the reason there are no people with 20%-40% wealth in the U.S. is because the bankrupt middle class has been "killed," which is an evil method of maintaining stability—hence the term "kill line."

They also say China has "locked health points," meaning once wealth drops below 10%, it no longer decreases, corresponding to the near absence of distribution in the 0%-10% range in the chart, which also shows they indeed interpret the horizontal axis as a concept similar to "health points."

So, what is the correct understanding of this chart?

It's simple: the horizontal axis represents the percentage of the population distribution. To illustrate more vividly, imagine all adults worldwide lining up according to their net assets (assets minus liabilities), from the poorest to the richest. The far left is the poorest, and the far right is the wealthiest.

The 0~10% position represents the poorest 10%, and 50% is the median wealth group globally. The vertical axis shows the distribution of people within this wealth range across different regions.

For example, at the 30% position on the horizontal axis, representing relatively poor people, Africans account for 25%, Indians 35%, and Chinese 10%, and so on.

Therefore, the near absence of distribution in the 20%~40% range in North America means that there are almost no people in the global bottom 20%~40% wealth ranking in North America.

In fact, Europe is similar. Since this chart treats Europe as a whole, you see many Europeans in the 10%~40% range.

But this is because of internal wealth disparities within Europe, including Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Balkans.

If you only plot Western Europe, it’s likely, like the U.S., that there would be almost no distribution in the 10%~50% range.

Of course, you might say, this shows that once Americans become poor enough to reach a certain range, they quickly fall to the bottom? The next question is: does this horizontal axis align with intuition?

The 20%~40% range, nearly one-fifth of the width, just disappears—doesn't that mean "killed"?

Then, let's look at the proportion of the ultra-rich at the far right: the U.S. and Europe have high proportions, while Latin America and Africa have almost none. China and India have some, with China having more than India. All of this aligns with intuition.

But there's a strange point: the Asia-Pacific region at the far right is quite thick, with a population share reaching 15%.

Apart from China, the countries capable of producing billionaires in the AP region are Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. Clearly, Australia and New Zealand are not that wealthy on average, Singapore has a small population, South Korea has a large wealth gap with top billionaires but not many super-rich, so the region's thickness at the far right is almost entirely supported by Japan.

Are the Japanese so wealthy? That’s why I raised the question earlier: does this horizontal axis make sense? The answer is no, it doesn't.

In this chart, the horizontal axis is based on the percentage of the population, but for assets, it grows exponentially.

So, the top 10% and the middle 10% on the horizontal axis both occupy the same width (1/10), but in terms of assets, 65% to 70% might correspond to a gap between a self-built house worth 200,000 yuan in a village and a property worth 2 million yuan in a provincial capital;

However, from 90% to 95%, it corresponds to the difference between a Beijing native's 8 million yuan property and a billionaire's assets worth over 100 million yuan.

In terms of global assets, the difference between the first and tenth place is even greater than the difference between 100 million and 1 billion people.

Therefore, the horizontal axis in this chart needs to be stretched on the right side.

Once you understand this, many strange points in the chart become clear: for example, why are there so many wealthy Japanese?

Because Japan, as an old developed country, has accumulated many top 1% billionaires with assets worth billions, even if they are not globally famous.

Why is China so thick in the 70%~90% range? Because this range seems long, but on an exponential scale, it hasn't been sharply expanded. Most people's assets are in real estate, with the difference being between a few million yuan in third-tier cities and tens of millions in Beijing or Shanghai. Why does China have a "10% blood lock" phenomenon?

Because wealth distribution is spindle-shaped: even the poorest 10% is amplified exponentially.

The world's poorest are not asset-zero, but heavily indebted.

That's why many poor people in the U.S. and Europe are still at 0%, as they are old capitalist financial powers.

And the poorest Chinese generally don't have the qualification to go into debt, benefiting from policies like land use rights that count as assets, so their assets are mostly above zero, easily surpassing the class brothers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Thus, almost no Chinese are in the 10% range. Once you understand the meaning of the horizontal axis, you can then understand the so-called "kill line."

Real middle class in the U.S. isn't at the 50% mark on the axis; because North America as a whole is wealthy, the American middle class actually falls roughly within the 80%~90% range, similar to high-income professionals in Chinese first-tier cities.

And generally, the poor in the U.S. are around the 60% mark. The 20%~40% range might just represent assets of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

"40% health points" is not the American middle class at all, but the precarious bottom-tier population.

Falling from 40% to 20% isn't a rapid descent of the middle class into homelessness, but rather a poor person who was already struggling becoming completely destitute.

In simple terms, going from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars is a lifetime effort for the poor in Latin America, Indian caste members, African tribes, and Southeast Asian natives. Many people in this range have stopped halfway, leading to a broad distribution.

For high-income, high-consumption North America, assets of a few thousand dollars can quickly evaporate due to accidents, or luck might bring a new job, restoring a few thousand.

The space for improvement in poor regions, which takes a lifetime, in North America is just a rollercoaster of ups and downs.

Similarly, China's wealth distribution from 70% to 90% reflects how Chinese people are striving toward the middle class.