It's important to make a distinction here between someone who is wealthy and someone who has high income. I think the people who this applies to are more in the bucket of high earner. E.g. take a typical "high earner" tech worker who brings in $500k p.a. total, but lives in an expensive Californian town. They may have a $2mln mortgage to service and high living expenses. Their debt to income ratio is high, but they can afford it (for a time). At the same time, this person is not wealthy. They need the high cash flow to service their debt load and their net worth may even close to zero (taking the debt into account).

There are many definitions of what is a wealthy person, but in my book it is someone with a net worth >$10mln and a low debt loading. Assuming their holdings are in a well diversified portfolio generating 5% net of inflation, they can likely maintain their lifestyle while their wealth will still continue to grow and they are not at risk of being wiped out by income loss or small drawdowns. E.g. someone who has assets worth $100mln but $90mln debt is very highly leveraged and could quickly find themselves being forced to liquidate assets in case they experience just a 10% drawdown.

A wealthy person will indeed often use debt as a leverage vehicle or simply to make a purchase without having to liquidate their holdings, but the debt will still mostly be a small portion of their assets and often also a relatively small portion of the appreciation of their wealth.

> And the poor spend a lot higher percentage of their income on every day purchases that are being impacted.

The wages of the poor go up with inflation.

> I have a mortgage that is several multiples above my annual income. Most other wealthy people also have debt because it makes sense due to low rates and good credit. The poor often have a tough time getting credit. If you're not making a lot of money it's tough to get debt at multiples of your annual income.

That's why family annihilators are dominated by middle-class dads who lost their jobs and couldn't find another. Middle-class people can accumulate an ungodly amount of debt before the runway runs out.

Income is increasing faster than inflation, so it is helping poor people more than it hurts and easing their debts.

Also, I am not considering upper middle class wealthy. Wealthy is upper 1% who control most of our wealth.

OP didn't necessarily said the poor are better off than the wealthy. The broader point is that if you are in favor of debt forgiveness.. well, this is certainly one way to get it done.