"Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband."

- HL Mencken

People who tend to read essays on economics believe that "equality" can be best created by raising up the poor. They themselves are rarely poor and if they can make things a little bit better for others without affecting their own lives, they win. Everything is better for everyone. This is the core of liberalism.

People whose lives are shit believe that "equality" means everyone is equal. If their lives are shit the least they can do is make those rich fucks have shit lives, too. Yeah, things might get a little worse for them but it'll get a lot worse for those pricks with their cars in garages, their kids in college and their retirement in a fund, not a fantasy. This is the core of populism.

Populists rarely consider that the natural order is hierarchal and whenever you break a structure you provide opportunity for people with exposure to ratchet up their holdings outside the normal constraint of law and order. And liberals are terrible at applying equal gains across all demographics. Thus the cycle of history.