There’s a funny little problem with an economy where the rich keep getting richer and everyone else keeps getting poorer.
Eventually, you run out of people who can afford to buy anything.
It’s a minor inconvenience, really. You’ve spent decades squeezing every last dollar out of the working class, buying up their homes, raising their rents, suppressing their wages, and turning basic necessities into subscription services. You’ve accumulated more money than your grandchildren’s grandchildren could spend in a thousand lifetimes.
Congratulations. You’ve won capitalism.
Now what?
Your employees can’t afford the products they make. Your tenants can’t afford the rent you’re charging. The people who used to eat at restaurants, buy cars, take vacations, and occasionally enjoy being alive are now spending 70 percent of their income on a roof and groceries.
But don’t worry. The stock market is doing fantastic.
Here’s the thing about wealth that apparently gets lost somewhere between the second yacht and the third vacation home: an economy needs people with money to spend.
Think about how stupid this is. You own a company that sells $50,000 cars, but the people building those cars can barely afford a used Honda Civic. You own a restaurant chain, but your employees have to bring lunch from home because eating where they work would blow their weekly grocery budget. You own thousands of homes, but the people maintaining them will never be able to afford one.
At some point, you have to wonder who the hell is supposed to buy all this stuff.
Today’s billionaires seem considerably less interested in answering that question.
Why pay someone enough to buy a house when you can buy the house yourself and rent it back to them?
Why offer decent wages when you can tell employees they’re lucky to have jobs?
Why build products people can afford when you can lend them money to buy products they can’t?
And when people finally stop spending because they’re broke, you can blame the economic slowdown on their poor financial decisions.
Should’ve skipped the avocado toast, idiot.
The truly absurd part is that there isn’t even a finish line.
A guy worth $10 billion wants $20 billion. The guy worth $20 billion wants $50 billion. At some point, you’re not accumulating money to improve your life. You’re collecting points in a video game where everyone else is struggling to pay their electric bill.
And the points aren’t imaginary. They’re houses people can’t buy. They’re businesses people can’t compete with. They’re political influence ordinary citizens can’t afford. They’re an increasingly large claim on the things everyone else needs to live.
Of course, rich people aren’t all cartoon villains, and building wealth isn’t inherently evil. Investment creates businesses, jobs, and innovations. The problem begins when so much wealth and power become concentrated that the people doing the actual work have less and less bargaining power, ownership, and opportunity.
Because eventually, something gives.
Maybe consumer spending collapses. Maybe younger generations stop having children because raising a family costs more than a luxury sedan. Maybe people lose faith in institutions that promise prosperity while delivering another rent increase.
Or maybe society just becomes a place where a tiny minority owns everything and everyone else pays them for permission to exist.
And that’s the great irony.
The wealthy benefit enormously from a functioning society. They need educated workers, reliable infrastructure, stable communities, paying customers, and people who believe the economic system offers them some chance of getting ahead.
Keep hollowing those things out, and eventually you’re undermining the very system that made you rich.
You can own every apartment building in the city. You can own every grocery chain, every hospital, every parking garage, and every square inch of beachfront property.
But if the rest of society can barely afford to live, what exactly have you built?
A kingdom full of people who can’t afford to be your customers.
And a throne sitting on top of an economy you’ve spent your entire life dismantling.