Current Events > A simple thing about wealth inequality that blows my mind a bit

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Most people understand on a basic level that landlords are bad because their ownership of multiple homes they don't need simply serves to drive up the price of those homes and make them less available for regular people. Landlords exist because they intend to grow wealth from these assets, at the cost of others. You want to buy a house in London? Well too bad, because Foxtons own them all and they intend to rent them out forever, unless you fancy buying a garbage piece of shit flat for 3 bajillion pounds.

I think even people who aren't at all financially savvy get that. That's why everyone roasts landlords. Landlords are scum, right? Scumlords.

But in the grand scheme of how wealth operates, real estate is just one type of asset. Not the biggest one, not really the one that wealthy people lean on to be wealthy. They do this exact same trick with everything - commodities, private equity, bonds, stocks. They take the stuff you can't buy and make it unassailably expensive, pricing you out of the market until your only option is to rent.

Basically, people understand home ownership because it's basically the only asset most people in the world consider even remotely tangible in their lifetime. But we fail to make the connection to this and literally how all wealth operates, and how deep the rabbit hole goes.

The average person doesn't understand wealth.

They think you do a job and get paid money to become wealthy.

The idea of you already having money and it explodes making more money from itself than a guy working a fulltime job with you doing nothing at all for that to happen doesn't make sense to them.

Average person is also bad at math so even harder for them to get it even when explained to them.

WingsOfGood posted...

The average person doesn't understand wealth.

They think you do a job and get paid money to become wealthy.

The idea of you already having money and it explodes making more money from itself than a guy working a fulltime job with you doing nothing at all for that to happen doesn't make sense to them.

Average person is also bad at math so even harder for them to get it even when explained to them.

And then they add the libertarian mindset of "wealth is a virtue" and they literally think that these people are by definition morally superior. Elon Musk is morally superior because he earned more money playing path of exile for 5 minutes than a fireman saving lives for an entire year. Yes, makes perfect sense.