Where does wealth come from?
Ignore the fact that for some lucky people it comes from their parents. Wealth comes from an excess of income. Having more income than you need to spend.
Tens of thousands of years ago, humans spent their day finding or hunting enough food to eat and then resting before doing it again tomorrow. Food was income and we were getting enough to survive. Or we died.
Then we started farming and some of us could produce more food than we needed and the grains we grew could be stored for years. Food was still income, but now some of us could store excess income. The excess income became wealth.
That wealth could be used to feed others in return for their time working to grow more crops. So our wealthiest ancestors were able to convert the time of our poorer ancestors into even more wealth for themselves.
This pattern continues today. The wealthy are able to convert the income of poorer people into more wealth for themselves in many ways. A popular method is buying and renting housing.
Since the turn of the century, the US has suffered a worsening housing shortage. Many people can no longer afford to buy their own home. US politicians’ response is to talk about the need to build more housing. Politicians in the UK offer the same solution for a similar problem there too.
But data shows that the ratio of housing units in the US to the population is higher now than at any time this century. The UK has seen a similar increase in the ratio of housing units to people too.
The housing shortage is caused by wealthy people paying more for housing so they can rent it to poorer people and convert their income into wealth. The wealthy can use poorer people like livestock, milking wealth out of them.
This understanding of capitalism explains how the wealthiest 10% of Americans have now hoarded 68.3% of the country’s wealth. Leaving the poorest 50% of Americans with a measly 2.5% between them.
During COVID, there was outrage at businesses that profited unfairly from their customers.
Is it any different when wealthy people push up property prices so they can profit from people who are poorer than them?
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