Ever since the invention of the concept of symbols of wealth for the facilitation of commercial exchange, i.e. the beginning of the use of money in different forms, there was one unbreakable truth that remains constant and fully in force until today:
Money is more or less a given quantity and it follows the laws of communicating vessels.
This means that when someone was amassed a lot of money (to an aristocracy level, not a middle class level) , someone else has very little money or not at all because the former person has appropriated it. The communicating vessels are clear and always the indication of extreme wealth is a direct indication of abject poverty and vice versa.
The accumulation of such huge wealth is also direct proof of use of undermining, illegal and embezzling means for the acquisition of this wealth. Proof of the truth we just said is that the people who have this level of immense wealth do not work, do not have salaries and have income from rent, allowances, funding, ‘financial motives’ from the state, reimbursement by the state (which includes the so-call parliamentary reimbursement), investments, bonds, stocks and all kinds of different tricks related to gambling, cheating and black money (such as the stock market, the bankruptcy of corporations, state affiliations and co-operations, the game of periodical nationalizations – denationalizations – nationalizations of corporations, and others)
No person, no matter how worthy, intelligent, dynamic, antagonistic they be cannot amass wealth beyond that of the upper middle class (that is, usually highly specialized, freelancing / self-employed professionals) without using the above underhanded, shady and abusive means which are accessible only to specific families and their vassals and do not operate on the principle of meritocracy but that of submission and heritage.