Trapped in the limbo between affluence and wealth, he starts to question the hamster wheel of salaried employment. He muses on the fact that, while the top 5 percent of the population earns just 18 percent of the nation's income, the top 2 percent owns 80 percent of the wealth. His own labor had gotten him into the top 5 percent, but only equity would get him into the top 2 percent. As The Leap progresses, this theme evolves into an elaborate counterpoint between debased labor and exalted capital. Labor is stultifying and moribund.
Capital is creative and life-affirming.
The key element distinguishing labor from capital is risk. What a contrast to the superwealthy venture capitalists who staked HomePortfolio, all of them titans who gobble life by the fistful. He phones friends, relatives, venture capitalists, next-door neighbors, total strangers, even NBC anchorman Stone Phillips, trying to drum up funds to keep HomePortfolio afloat. Capitalism is about capital, nowhere more so than at an online startup. Desperate for cash, Ashbrook and his partner shoulder hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt as their wives protest at the ruin of their family finances.