if you own a million dollars US or more - you’re one of the top 1%, richest people on the planet.

Is an American with a small house in some hyper-inflated corner of the California real estate market really wealthier than a guy out in Malaysia or Nigeria who owes property that's 1/10th the price but can pay $2/day for an army of laborers?

I think this puts too much faith in the value of the American dollar relative to the functional value of real estate and human labor trading at a fraction of the price thousands of miles away. Real wealth needs to have some degree of political power behind it. A guy with a $500 rifle who can command a hundred acres of turf and a thousand other people is - in my opinion - substantially wealthier than a guy with a $500,000 condo who owes his continued existence to some Madison Avenue ad agency.

This means ALL of the people in Congress and the Senate are in the top 1%

All the people in Congress and the Senate command votes in one of the wealthiest political bodies on the planet. Having a 1/438 share in the $5T us appropriations budget is worth far more than a piddly million dollars in a savings account.