"Calculating a poor person’s wealth is a science. For a rich person, it’s an incredibly abstract art."
Even as the pandemic and financial crisis introduce us to new and grotesque ways to suffer, it seems as if the rich have been spared the worst of it. Their net worth has increased by $637,000,000,000 while poor friends of mine beg for rent money on social media. It can feel as if there are two economies, one for us and another for the rich. This is wrong, however. There is only one economy. The difference between how the wealthy and the working classes experience the same world is not just in the amount of money we have and what that can buy—it’s built into the nature of money, as I learned when I was studying to become an accountant.