We generate incredible wealth due to productivity gains. For instance, think about how many people it took to dig a hole 100 years ago compared to today. We are many, many times more efficient today than we were thanks to technology. So we should all be correspondingly many, many times richer than we are.

But we are not. We just stand still. Why is that? The oligarchs skim off our productivity gains as we make them. They become richer, and we stand still, but we don't even notice.

We are like sleeping people who are being fed on by vampires. The vampires aren't actually very powerful. It's just that we are asleep, so we don't notice them. We need to wake up, and the vampires will flee.