The parasites have been feasting for so many decades that they’ve lost the ability to discern reality: their survival now depends on feeding on other parasites.
Let’s conduct a thought experiment. First, set aside all the usual economic-ideological certainties, mythologies and filters–capitalism and free markets are the fountains of endless wealth, socialism is the answer, etc.–and then look at our culture not as a monetary-economic machine but as an ecosystem of parasites and hosts. From this perspective consider this statement:
Now that the parasites have consumed the host, they only have each other to feed on.
In this scenario, the US consumer is the host and industries, cartels and corporations are the parasites (along with local governments, whose tax revenues are drawn from transactions and bubble wealth valuations), seeking to “maximize shareholder value” (i.e. profits) by any means available without killing the host.
The problem is the “profit motive” knows no limits and lacks the mechanisms to detect the host is about to keel over. In the natural world, parasites are in a feedback loop with the hosts they’re feeding on, as the death of the host means the death of the parasites.
In our culture, the parasites assume the host is immortal, due to the Federal Reserve and federal government’s ability to create money out of thin air and distribute it to the host. The parasites can suck as much wealth as they want from the host and the host may stumble but will never collapse because the Fed and Treasury will inject another few trillion dollars into the host to keep it slogging along.
But these injections aren’t a true measure of the host’s health. These financial injections can keep the patient alive but comatose, which suits the parasites just fine, but that doesn’t mean the patient is healthy and immortal.
Greed is infinite but the host is not. The host needs to be physically healthy and financially healthy to support a host of voracious parasites, and neither of these conditions apply.
Over 73% of US adults (i.e. the host) are overweight or obese, conditions which greatly increase the risks of a range of chronic illnesses. Only 26% of the adult populace is normal weight. To call this “healthy” is delusional.
Financially, the bottom 60%–some 200 million people–are on fumes. A strong case can be made (based on wages’ share of the economy and astronomical wealth inequality) that the bottom 80%–275 million Americans–are on fumes, but some percentage holds fast to the delusion they’re still “middle class,” i.e. financially secure and reasonably wealthy, due to the bubble valuations of stocks and housing.
Consider these statistics, courtesy of the St. Louis Federal Reserve database (FRED). (Statistics are the latest available in May 2025, and are rounded: $107.7 is $108, etc.)
Of America’s total household net worth of $160 trillion, the top 1% of households own $50 trillion, or 31%.
The top 10% own $108 trillion, or 67%.
The bottom 50% own $4 trillion, or 2.5%.
The top 1%–3.4 million people–are worth 12.5 times what the bottom 50%–170 million people–are worth.
Statistics like these are difficult to grasp, as they are abstractions. A real-world analogy helps us understand what the numbers mean.
Consider a vast expanse of desert. Divide this enormous space in half. On one side, there are the 19 wealthiest families in the U.S., who own a net worth of $2.6 trillion. This is larger than the GDP of Italy ($2.4 trillion, with a population of 59 million).
On the other side, there are 110 million Americans, 65% of the bottom 50% of the populace (170 million). These 110 million Americans also have a net worth of $2.6 trillion.
It’s difficult to fit 110 million people into the vast parcel, as this is the combined population of California, Texas, Florida and New York–the four most populous states in the U.S..
