Pecking Order

We're told that central banks saving the economy helps everyone. We're told that making the rich richer eventually benefits the non-rich. But the numbers tell a different story. While the Federal Reserve tripled stock prices, the bottom 90% of American households saw their share of wealth collapse from 35% to 22%, and the truly wealthy captured nearly all the gains. The system that's supposed to lift all boats has instead widened the moat.

•        The wealth effect never materialized. Central banks flooded markets with trillions to force everyone toward riskier assets, but only those who already owned stocks got rich. The economy barely grew while financial asset prices tripled, creating a reality where we're much wealthier on paper but poorer in practice.

•        The brutality of hierarchy has simply been repackaged. Instead of Alec Baldwin screaming that you're fired, today's system nudges you with narratives about what you deserve and who you could become. The mechanism changed. The outcome didn't.

•        The non-rich are offered debt instead of wages. Student loans, car payments, mortgage financing for depreciating experiences create the feeling of richness while quietly making people poorer and more dependent. It's behavioral maintenance disguised as opportunity.

•        Young ambitious people have become the system's most willing participants. The promise of mattering to the world, of being Someone Who Matters, is the hook that sets the line. Once you're in debt chasing that promise, escape becomes nearly impossible.

•        The pecking order is now engineered to be permanent. The gap between merely rich and really rich is widening every day. If the truly wealthy gain access to life extension technologies unavailable to others, the hierarchy calcifies into something irreversible.