Plutocracy

Free markets tend to lead to plutocracies, rather than democracies. When everything has a price, only those with an income have the power and freedom that society has to offer. Travel; health; range of leisure pursuits; and the freedom to choose how much, and how little of your life to devote towards maintaining that income, as compared to enjoying your life.

In a plutocracy, the rich become the idle rich. You can afford the staff to take care of the tedious wants and needs everybody has, like keeping your homes clean, car maintenance, seeing to the bills. As income increases, the more likely the rich become less and less connected to those mundane activities which root one to life, such as actually taking out the trash - or even putting those empties in the trash in the first place. They can drop those cigar dints anywhere they like, like slobs, knowing that the help are there, paid to pick them up and, if necessary, replace the carpet.

As wealth becomes obscene, this insanity settles in - a delirium of wealth, like nitrogen narcosis or the hypoxia one gets from ascending too high up a mountain without oxygen. Pretty soon, like forgetting that your air will run out or that you have to return to the surface some time, the rich start to get this demented notion that the only way to go is to get wealthier and wealthier, because otherwise they won't be able to catch up with the Jones next door who are earning twice as much as they are, but putting in half as much work.

They want to get wealthier, because otherwise people might think that they are poor.

On an income of £50,000 a year or higher I can't imagine anyone ever being poor. Actually, I can't even imagine an income of £10,000 a year. I've never been in a job that earned that much.

So we're living in a plutocracy, led by the deluded and the demented. People who've lost their sense of perspective, and who genuinely don't see the poor. If they did, they'd all have nervous breakdowns because by now, the poor are everywhere they look.