A World of Wealth Inequality Needs Only the Best Con Artists

To slow the widening income gap, we need to find ways to get the wealthy to consume—meaning to actually spend money.
Spend, not invest.
Rich people constantly buying houses, antiques, and稀缺 resources isn't consumption.
Buying and buying doesn't equal consumption. You have to buy things that are fleeting, perishable, and transient—that's consumption.
For example, services are a form of consumption.
I provide you with a service, you use it up, and it's gone. That's consumption.

Consumption always needs to upgrade. How? By selling stories.
You used to just be a bun maker, now you still are, but we package you up, give you a fancy title, and sell the experience to the rich.
When the rich feel the experience, you earn ten times your usual wage, and everyone is happy.
This is called experience upgrade. It requires society-wide consensus; we can't let the illusion break.

You can't have people laughing at someone who spent 200 bucks on your packaged rice, calling them a sucker.
Otherwise, will the rich still buy upgraded rice?
Don't use earnings as the sole metric.
If your evaluation is that single-dimensional, the rich won't buy your story. They'll just relentlessly buy essentials that most people need, like housing.

If they don't spend money on 20-dollar buns, they'll spend it on lottery tickets for housing quotas, then later sell you or your children a house for 5 million more. Do you want that?

From a pragmatic view, rice is rice no matter how you cook it. Sushi is just fish on rice balls; tempura is just vegetables wrapped in fried batter.
But you can't say it's bad.

If you were a billionaire who experienced something you'd never felt before in your life, how much would you say it's worth?

You see, the pricing has shifted onto yourself. How valuable your time is, that's how valuable your experience is.
This is called selling stories.