As societies get richer, people move from communal front-porch living to private backyards, enabled by amenities like air conditioning. This physical shift reflects a broader societal trend of sacrificing the 'emotional wealth' gained from strong community ties for the comfort and isolation of privacy.

The wealthy can bypass failing public systems like airports with private jets and services. The middle class, however, bears the full brunt of the stress, delays, and economic cost of crumbling infrastructure, making it a key indicator of a society's commitment to its citizens.

Extreme wealth creates a dangerous societal rift not just through inequality, but by allowing the ultra-rich to opt out of public systems. They have their own concierge healthcare, private transportation, and elite schools, making them immune to and ignorant of the struggles faced by the other 99.9%, which fuels populist anger.

To combat social stratification, a progressive VAT could be levied on exclusive, private services like elite clubs, private schools, and private jets. The revenue would then be reinvested into public infrastructure like parks, libraries, and schools for the broader community.

The super-rich lose empathy not necessarily because they are bad people, but because their lifestyle systematically isolates them from common experiences. With private airports, healthcare, and schools, they no longer participate in or understand the struggles of mainstream society. This segregation creates a fundamental disconnect that impacts their worldview and political influence.

Elite universities with massive endowments and shrinking acceptance rates are betraying their public service mission. By failing to expand enrollment, they function more like exclusive 'hedge funds offering classes' that manufacture scarcity to protect their brand prestige, rather than educational institutions aiming to maximize societal impact.

Extreme wealth inequality creates a fundamental risk beyond social unrest. When the most powerful citizens extricate themselves from public systems—schools, security, healthcare, transport—they lose empathy and any incentive to invest in the nation's core infrastructure. This decay of shared experience and investment leads to societal fragility.

Top universities with billion-dollar endowments should lose their tax-free status if they fail to grow enrollment. By artificially limiting admissions, they behave like exclusive luxury brands (e.g., "Birkin bags") that cater to the wealthy, rather than fulfilling their mission as engines of social mobility and public service.

Elites often hold beliefs about how society should be ordered that sound virtuous but would be disastrous for ordinary people. The proponents of these 'luxury beliefs' are insulated from the negative real-world consequences by their own wealth and status.