[vinceguidry]

There's also the aspect that nice things require other nice, expensive things to keep them up. Having a nice set of boots isn't going to help much if it's sitting in the rain overnight regularly.

This all points to the lesson that wealth and riches aren't the same thing. Rich people are rich because they have wealth, even poor people can amass riches, say by winning the lottery, but can't be called wealthy until they actually have wealth.

A person can become wealthy off the efforts of other people, but if we want wealth for all, then it's society itself that must hold the wealth. This was Karl Marx's conclusion, but all attempts to build a society capable of holding wealth for all failed.

So we're stuck with trickle-down, the idea that the surplus wealth of the wealthy is good enough for all.