Ask Lemmy

Depends what it is you imagine they're taking. There comes a point in wealth when you're not really talking about monetary amounts or assets per se but raw power, measured in whatever abstract units you wish to use. The hyper wealthy care about political and cultural power (a battle very much underway and largely won). They don't care so much whether the average family has $10 left at the end of the month (or $200 or -$50). The numbers become meaningless. What's important to the hyperwealthy is that whatever that number is it not be able to purchase strategic land, production, or political power. (Elon wouldn't care if every worker became a millionaire so long as bread now cost 3 million and property a billion.) Their power is felt in their exclusive access to limited resource (certain beach fronts for example, or a presidents time).

To that end there comes a point where they're not interested in taking "money" any more, since they already entirely dominate that power dynamic. You could make the number whatever you like they're still in control. Them "allowing" a very very modest improvement in some living standards doesn't cost them anything but buys a relative amount of civil order, which is how I suspect this is likely to play out.

The pivot to far right politics over the last 20 years is part of this. When you are artificially keeping a large part of a nation on the brink, and you don't want them to accrue traditional assets like land or wealth, then a potent replacement is to "pay" them in permission to hate.

History shows that this is a foolish course and it doesn't last long. But perhaps a few "stable enough" decades is all these materialist hyper barons care about. Wealth and power is to be enjoyed now. There's no god or heaven only power and the future is someone else's problem..