One of us

"Say what you want about Trump and Musk, but they're billionaires, so they must have done something right."

How many times have you heard that lately? Believing the rich are rich just because they are more valid than others has become a widespread social convention.

But do you know who is, in fact, extremely intelligent and capable? My wife. She knows how to do something really incredible: it's not shorting stocks, it's not buying and selling apartments; she knows how to create actual human lives - she's an embryologist working in a reproductive clinic. For 25 years she has helped thousands (literally) of people to have children.

So every time I hear someone say that this or that millionaire must be the pinnacle of human ingenuity, I tell myself that the millionaire in question can be thankful that my wife is one of us: an empathetic human being dedicated to doing what's best for everyone.

Because if she was a ruthless money-making machine, with her brains, she would make minced meat of most two-bit brokers, cryptobros, real estate speculators and Jeff Bezos wannabees out there, and we would have a garage full of Lamborghinis stacked in order of upholstery color. But instead, she chose to use her intelligence for the good of others.

This started in the 1980s

Let us accept, then, that there is a distinction between being intelligent and being ruthless, and that this distinction has been clear for a long time - except before the French Revolution and after the 1980s.

Yes, the 80’s, when Western economies shifted from an industrial, wage-driven model to one that embraced speculation, financialization, and the accumulation of capital for its own sake. The so-called "Greed Revolution" did more than just concentrate wealth: it completely rewired society's values, which went from admiring astronauts and nurses to worshipping anyone who made obscene amounts of money.

This transition was helped by the deregulation of financial markets and labor protections, which allowed capital to move freely while labor remained constrained. In the U.S., Ronald Reagan slashed top tax rates from 70% to 28%, and Maggie Thatcher (after duly crushing unions) sold a whooping 160 billion pounds (inflation-adjusted) of public assets, privatizing 63% of all public company jobs in the UK.

What followed was a spiral of inequality that has lasted four decades: today, in the United States, 0.1% of the population is richer than the poorest 90% combined.

It’s no wonder, perhaps, that the focus of our admiration moved towards the bold new proponents of the triumphant greed-über-alles, believing that it was their brains and skill that made them rich. Those who designed molecules to save lives became invisible, while those who made killer money at any cost became folk legends: enter the rise of the Wall Street Sharks.

Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken or the Enron people became cultural icons for an entire generation, despite the fact that, with crystal clarity, they did little more than plunder the real economy, that of working people.

Let's take an example: Carl Icahn. In 1985, Icahn launched a hostile takeover of Trans World Airlines (TWA) by borrowing like a man possessed, acquiring a majority of the company, passing on the debt and systematically liquidating its assets (routes, aircraft, terminals) to pay off the debt. These suicidal practices led to the destruction of more than 35,000 jobs, and caused the pensions of more than 126,000 families to evaporate.

Icahn pocketed more than $460 million and left TWA with an unrecoverable $500 million debt that bankrupted it in 1992. Contradictory, then, that he was awarded the prestigious Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, and that Time magazine repeatedly praised his extraordinary business skills.

Interestingly, the counterculture reflected this peculiar shift in values, as the Punk movement made aberrant and provocative behavior culturally acceptable; in fact, that's why your son wears an eyebrow piercing.

* 30 years later, Icahn would see the light, and from 2000-2010 he donated hundreds of millions to Mount Sinai Hospital and Princeton University; he also created schools in the Bronx and founded shelters for homeless mothers. In 2010 he signed the Giving Pledge, pledging to donate, during his lifetime, most of his fortune (estimated at some $20 billion), although at 89 years of age he still hasn't found the time to do so.

The illusion of merit

Despite the legends of self-made-men and business geniuses that emerged in the 1980s (not only the Wall Street hacks, but also the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc.), the reality is that money, for the most part, is inherited. The percentage of the world's wealth that is inherited has already fallen back to its 1910 levels, and 9 of the 20 richest people in the world have either inherited all their money or started out very rich and then expanded their fortunes.

It should come as no surprise, as our deregulated, lobby-addicted and extremely sophisticated financial industry makes making money with money easier than ever. Living on rent hasn't been this easy and profitable since unions and workers' rights movements ended monopolies and 70-hour weeks back at the dawn of the 20th century.

In a way, the 1980s and the fall of the Soviet bloc ended the class struggle with a technical KO victory for the capitalists, undoing a bunch of valuable socialist gains (at least those related to the distribution of wealth).

And this is accelerating: between 2020 and 2023, in the world's top 31 economies, dividends grew 14 times faster than wages, and the % of global GDP coming from returns to capital (not labor) reached 31%, a complete return to 19th century levels.

For example: if you bought an apartment in Madrid in 1995, you have earned, doing nothing, the same money as a cancer researcher in ten years of work. And if that cancer researcher lives in Madrid, all extractive capital activities combined (rent, energy, inflation, transportation) have taken, de facto, the whole growth of his salary for the last ten years, and and then some: in fact, he's about €1,500 per year poorer than in 2015.

The data is staggering: since 2015, 40 million people living in European capitals have seen an overall increase in wages of about 2 trillion euro, of which 1.5 trillion have gone straight to rent increases, 432 billion to rising prices of water, energy and gas, and another 200 billion to increases in banking fees, telecom and transportation. All in all, more than 100% of the value generated by the work of 40 million people for 10 years is now in the pockets of those who control key extractive assets.

As a result, compared to 2015, 40% more of the salary paid by a Parisian company to its employees goes directly into the pockets of property owners ( in Barcelona it is 60%, and 100% in Dublin). Companies and workers lose wealth, landlords gain more. This sounds completely illogical - unless you own thirty-five apartments in the center of Lyon, I guess.

 Money begets power

Those who live on income tend to protect themselves rather than help others to progress; thus, when large fortunes come mainly from the control of assets (apartments, energy, transportation, feudal lordships, etc...) , their incentive is to push for favorable legislation to protect their position (tax exemptions, reduction of labor rights, low interest rates, right of pernada, etc...).

Thus, the financial machinery that concentrates wealth also concentrates power, and uses it to defend its interests. A clear (and classic) symptom of this is the proliferation of "crony politics": as elites ignore the common good and focus more and more openly on enriching themselves, they are forced to choose loyalty over competence, putting more and more cronies in key positions.

But the problem with cronies is that they generally don’t know (or don’t care) how to run trains on time, how to fund R&D, or how to keep the electric grid operational. Recent catastrophic events like Spain’s DANA flash floods, Italy and Spain’s massive blackouts, the Stanford budget cuts or the Texas floods are partially derived from cannibalizing public services or arbitrary privatizations, and are tragic case studies of what happens when you put your buddies in charge of complex infrastructures.

The cultural glorification that started in the 1980’s, combined with 40 years of aggressive lobbying and policing, and with the increased tensions generated by extreme inequalities and incompetent rules, are giving way to a phenomenon that we should know very well, one that went full cycle in the 1930’s (with catastrophic consequences): the rise of the Grasshoppers.

The Grasshopper, promoted to Chief Food Officer

You know the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant, don't you?

All through the summer, the Ant looked for food and stored it for the winter to come, while the Grasshopper ate to his heart’s content in the plentiful forest and spent his days playing guitar and watching re-runs of Friends. The Ant warned her friend of the harsh winter to come, but the Grasshopper kept telling her that she was coercing her individual freedom and threatened to sue the Ant for harassment. Also, there would be enough food in the winter if it wasn’t for all the immigrants.

The winter came, the Grasshopper ran out of food, and she had to beg the Ant for help. And the Ant helped the Grasshopper, because isn’t that what Ants do? They’re just nice folks who don’t mind working and who take care of everyone else, even if they’re idiots. And so the Grasshopper helped herself to what she claimed was a safe and reasonable take of the Ant’s work, which he estimated at 60% after an audit by an independent Grasshopper.

It’s safe to say that our society now cheers strongly for the Grasshopper. The Ant is boring: the Ant isn't a charismatic empresario with a personal net worth of 60% of the food thanks to her "ingenuity". The Ant doesn’t holiday in Ibiza with other famous ants, and doesn't buy 8 million dollar handbags. But without the Ant, trains don’t run, hospitals collapse, science dies, and, point in fact, Grasshoppers starve to death or die of COVID.

And it's not like 'playing guitar' isn't important - surely, Van Gogh, Lou Reed or Dostoyevsky were 'Grasshoppers'. But who do should be in charge of planning for the winter? Against all logic, the Ants are losing public favor even in that arena.

This distortion of merit has profoundly altered career aspirations. Today, the top career choice for young people in the US and Europe is, you guessed it, "influencer." According to a 2024 survey of young Americans aged 18-30, 33% said they wanted to be an influencer, mainly in video games (49%) or fashion (46%).

In Spain alone, more than 11,000 doctors are estimated to have left the public healthcare system since 2020, largely due to burnout and low pay. In the UK, NHS vacancies exceeded 110,000 in 2023, with 42,400 employees resigning from their posts in the second quarter of 2022 alone due, mainly to "work-life balance difficulties."

Likewise, a 2022 study published in Nature revealed that nearly 40% of young European scientists are considering abandoning their research careers due to job insecurity. And in 2024, 50 hospitals in France closed their emergency rooms due to staff shortages. Nurses, long considered the backbone of healthcare, are facing such intense levels of attrition that the World Health Organization forecasts a global shortfall of 10 million healthcare workers by 2030.

All good on the corporate front

But not all professions are in dire straits: the so-called "bullshit jobs" have become a great career option. And by "bullshit jobs" we refer to anthropologist David Graeber's 2018 book "Bullshit Jobs: a theory", which argues that capitalism is not as efficient as it claims, and that a large number of jobs have no other function than to keep people in check and avoid questioning the economic system. They would be, in a sense, the mandarins of unproductive capitalism.

And, indeed, the jobs identified by Graeber - compliance managers, public relations strategists, middle managers who supervise other managers, internal consultants... - have seen their salaries skyrocket over the past two decades, while the salaries of essential professions such as teachers, scientists or doctors have stagnated.

Average wage growth in real terms since 2000

Graeber may have been too lyrical in labeling all these jobs as "bullshit," but it's hard not to think that essential jobs (civil engineers, cab drivers, nurses...) should be respected and well-paying jobs.

Kind but strong

Let’s not fall into the “All rich and powerful people are evil” cliché: there are plenty of positive examples of truly smart and powerful people who don’t think that grabbing and looting is the way forward.

1) Nick Hanauer, entrepreneur, billionaire and one of the first investors in Amazon. Activist against inequality and extreme wealth.

"Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal one."

2) Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand. She advocated an economy based on welfare over GDP growth, fair taxation, greater worker protection and strong public investment, while maintaining fiscal stability.

"I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused."

3) Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), abandoned quarterly profits as a business guide and incorporated sustainability as the company's core business strategy.

"Companies cannot succeed in societies that fail."

4) Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia clothing brand. In 2022, Chouinard transferred ownership of his company (valued at ~$3 billion) to a non-profit foundation for the express purpose of fighting climate change and protecting nature.

"Earth is now our sole shareholder.

Contrary to current belief, you can very well have the smarts, skills and opportunity to make money… and take only what you need, using the rest for the benefit of everyone.

After all, how much money can someone need? Between 2000 and 2023, sales of supercars tripled, and those of luxury goods and superyachts more than doubled. In the last ten years, sales of things like Balenciaga's $2,145 fake Ikea handbag, the $18.7 million Bugatti "La Voiture Noire", joyrides into space, or $6 million bananas, have increased by $130 billion. In the time of greatest wealth in human history, our resources seem to be disproportionately in the hands of in the hands of Marie-Antoinettesque characters with little sense of empathy and no sensible use for their wealth.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."

Guilty as charged, we put the Grasshopper in charge of storing food for the winter. And when we have discovered that the granaries are empty, and that their personal fortunes have increased by 2 billion dollars (like Donald Trump’s), we’ve still bought their propaganda, blamed the Mexicans or the feminists, and accepted wasting billions in defense as per their instructions. All that is actually happening, and it’s our fault.

But that doesn’t mean we have to give up and accept a thousand Dark Years of war and pillaging. There is something we can do, and it’s as simple as using our capital with purpose. If you are one of us – the builders, the problem-solvers, the empathic, the doers – then put your money behind people like you. And, more importantly, don’t give it to the other guys: starve them of capital, starve them of power.

Money placed in companies that solve real problems, run by competent, mission-driven people, create returns beyond immediate financial gain. You will make money, sure, but you will also see how things get better for everyone. Every euro you invest in speculative funds helps prop up fossil fuels, arms manufacturers, or housing speculation. Every euro you move toward healthtech, green energy, or science startups helps push the world in the other direction.

More importantly, your money becomes a declaration – a vote. A statement that you value contribution over extraction, that you trust engineers more than influencers. That you are one of us.

Because the bluffers may run the circus, but the people who can actually fix things are here, and they need you.

📢 Loved it? Share this article: