The Squeeze Out by James Caldwell

Stage 1 – The rich get richer, asset prices rise.

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:10:04 UTC

Taxes on the rich are cut (1980s onward).
Rich people don’t spend much - they invest in assets like housing and stocks.
Asset prices go up.
Poorer and middle-class people feel wealthier, so they sell their assets or take on debt to live better.
It feels good at first - house prices rising, retirements funded - but they’re losing ownership.

Stage 2 – Credit dries up, crash hits

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:10:37 UTC

Ordinary people have now sold off wealth and maxed out debt.
The rich decide they’re no longer a safe bet — and stop lending.
With no new credit, people stop spending.
Demand collapses → jobs lost → businesses fail.
This leads to a major economic crisis — like the 2008 financial crash.
First real collapse in living standards for millions.

Stage 3 – The government steps in, but gets squeezed too

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:26:43 UTC

Stage 3 – The government steps in, but gets squeezed too

The state tries to save the economy — welfare, bailouts, public services.
But instead of taxing the rich, it borrows from them.
Like the people before, the government starts dis-saving - selling public assets and taking on debt.
Over time, the government becomes deeply indebted and asset-poor.
It's the next weak hand to be squeezed out.

Stage 4 – The middle class is targeted, services collapse

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:27:20 UTC

The government has no more wealth and can’t borrow forever.
So it starts cutting public services: schools, hospitals, housing, local councils.
It raises taxes - not on the rich, but on the middle class, the last group with some wealth.
The middle class starts to lose assets and power, just like the working class before.
Society stops functioning for ordinary people.

Stage 5 – The rich own everything, society transforms

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:27:26 UTC

The rich now own almost all wealth. No one else has anything left.
The economy stops producing for the majority - only for the elite.
Cities change - luxury housing and services for the rich, slums and precarity for everyone else.
With no one left to squeeze, the rich may turn on each other - through conflict or war.
This is the final stage: extreme inequality, instability, and the end of a fair society.

The squeeze out is when the rich slowly take everything from everyone else.

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:28:52 UTC

They use their wealth to buy up homes, land, and businesses. Over time, this pushes out the working class, then the middle class, and then even the government.

Poor and middle-income people are forced to sell what they own or take on debt just to get by. The government borrows from the rich instead of taxing them. It sells its own assets and cuts public services.

At the end of this process, only the rich have wealth. Everyone else is in debt and has little or no power. Society stops working for most people and only serves the rich.

jamie_caldwell1 — 2025-04-02 05:31:44 UTC

For most of history, a small elite has owned almost everything, and the majority of people lived in poverty with little or no wealth. This was true in the UK, the US, and across the world — especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The period of wealth equality after World War II was not normal; it was rare and short-lived. From around 1945 to 1980, ordinary people could buy homes, build pensions, and own a share of wealth — even on average incomes. This only happened because of high taxes on the rich and strong public investment. Since the 1980s, we’ve been sliding back into the old pattern: extreme inequality, where only the rich own anything, and the rest survive on less.