They make their money off exploiting others for their greed. They have their nice summer and winter homes meanwhile slashing benefits. Their people work 50-60 hours a week and they enjoy their golf. They deserve to be burnt at the stake. **** these people
it is far more complicated that that...
We like to imagine that wealthy people become rich through grit, genius, or sheer force of will—but the truth is far more collective. No one gets rich in a vacuum. Much of modern wealth is built not just on individual ambition, but on the invisible scaffolding of government investment—funded, of course, by the American taxpayer.
Take the internet, transistors, the railroad system, commercial aviation—none of these innovations sprang from private boardrooms. They were seeded, nurtured, and de-risked with public money. Defense contracts, university research grants, infrastructure subsidies—this is the soil in which Fortune 500 empires grew. Companies like Google, Intel, Boeing, and countless others owe their very existence to taxpayer-funded innovation.
And yet, there’s a dangerous illusion held by many of today’s ultra-wealthy: that once a certain level of wealth is reached, the ladder can be kicked away. They hoard. They offshore. They shelter income, not out of necessity, but entitlement. They treat the public coffers like a buffet—happy to take but outraged when asked to give anything back.
Not all of them, to be fair. Some wealthy individuals
do believe in reinvestment, in giving back, in paying their fair share. But the dominant trend has been retreat—retreat from obligation, from civic duty, from the idea that wealth carries with it a debt to the society that made it possible.
This wasn’t always the case. During and before the Kennedy administration, the top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was over 90%—a figure mirrored in many Western nations at the time. But here's the twist: that rate didn’t cripple innovation. It
channeled it. Rather than hoarding salaries, business leaders reinvested profits back into their companies. This reinvestment didn’t just benefit shareholders—it created jobs, raised wages, and built what we now nostalgically refer to as the “golden age” of American manufacturing.
It was the era of the rising middle class, of stable jobs and upward mobility. It was the American Dream, made real—because wealth circulated, not just accumulated.
But then the tide turned. Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating with Reaganomics, tax rates were slashed, regulations gutted, and the myth of "trickle-down" economics took hold. The rich stopped investing in
us, and began extracting from
us. Public goods were defunded, unions were broken, pensions disappeared. The result? The slow, grinding decline of the American middle class. A hollowing out, not by accident, but by design.
And now, we’re watching the consequences unfold in real time. An economy rigged toward financialization, a workforce squeezed dry, and an elite class so detached from the public it once relied on that it now spends billions to build bunkers, escape pods, and private security states.
History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes. And the last time wealth inequality grew this wide, it ended in depression, unrest, and war.
So no—the rich didn’t do it alone. And they won’t be able to outrun the consequences alone either.
The core problem is this: the rich
run the administration, and they
own Congress—the very institutions meant to serve the people. Real change would require a complete overhaul of the upper echelons of government, a cleansing of the rot that’s seeped into every corner of power.
And perhaps the most poignant, bitter irony of all is this: the ultimate demise of the United States may come not by invasion, nor by collapse from below, but by appointment—from within. By elevating a billionaire grifter, a hollow symbol wrapped in gold leaf and narcissism, as the shining mantle of American greatness, we may have sealed our own decline.
The empire doesn’t fall with a bang—it crumbles from the rot at the top, while the rest of us argue over the ruins.
Diving Mullah
