I run an IT consultancy and often work in both commercial buildings and private residences across the UK. When it comes to the latter—trust me, the elites (and even the upper-middle class) still have an extraordinary amount of money.

What’s changed is that no one cares about the public sphere anymore. You wouldn’t believe the contrast between Britain’s crumbling high streets and the lavish interiors of some of these homes. I’ve seen marble floors, $10K TVs, $100K kitchens, $150K bathrooms. Home offices decked out with $50K worth of gear. Wine cellars, indoor spas, private gyms—you name it.

Even on the commercial side, it’s wild. It’s not uncommon to walk into a privately-owned or government-owned building and be greeted by a $5 million art piece in the lobby. Then you start looking around and adding up the costs—“they probably spent $10K just on that fancy trim around the doorframe.” Or you notice a particularly heavy door, Google it, and realize it costs $15K per door. Then you start counting the doors—there are thousands. The rabbit hole goes deep, and the amount of wealth becomes staggering. It’s just hidden in plain sight.

But all of this wealth is cloistered. No one’s investing in the public-facing world. There’s a broad cultural resignation—from the elites to the average person: “Why bother fixing the outside world? Just survive the workday and retreat into your private kingdom.” The mindset has shifted toward building personal fortresses rather than shared prosperity.

So yes, Britain feels poor—but it’s not because the money is gone. It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.

I've had very similar experiences in India. Incredibly expensive, well-furnished homes surrounded by streets filled with trash. The people living in there don't even walk outside any more, it's too hot/polluted/dirty for that. They get everything delivered to them or go for work/events in their fancy car.

Are those kitchen and bathroom numbers supposed to be shockingly high? Over here you're not far off just dividing the house price by the number of rooms.

Why do you go straight from upper-middle to elite? Is this something peculiar to the UK which I am missing? As a US citizen, I am used to upper-middle class lacking the purchasing power you describe (not that people don't try to compensate via borrowing) and an entire ecosystem of 'rich' that sit between the middle class and the elite.

Been several years since I was over there. What are the public spaces like?

Go back to my childhood (Australia) and a playground was a very basic slide, possibly weathered and with minimal regard for safety and no landscaping beside mown lawns. A public plaza would've been pretty austere. Now, either have quite premium fit-outs - high end playgrounds, thoughtful and professional landscaping, etc. The budgets would be huge. And there are still very premium fit-outs in many houses.

> It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.

That happened in the 80s. This is not a new sensation in England, just a worsening one.

Sounds exactly like Galbraith's concept of "private opulence and public squalor"

I'm wondering what should be the right way here. Taking the doorframe trim for £10K.

I see there could be like 3 options: 1) hide wealth / do not spend this money; 2) distribute to economy / i.e. pay a tradesman to curve the frame; 3) donate money to a fund or throw from a balcony to the crowd.

It doesn't seem that 1 cold be helpful to anyone. We see 2 in those examples, but it seem you imply that it's not the best way. So we have the only the 3rd option left, with donations. Is that what is considered as the best option? Is it sustainable in a long term?

Wasn't there a famous Brit who declared that there is no such thing as society ? If the commons has more or less been willed out of existence, should its decay surprise ?

> What’s changed is that no one cares about the public sphere anymore.

> So yes, Britain feels poor—but it’s not because the money is gone. It’s because it’s been withdrawn from the commons and buried behind closed doors.

This is not necessarily related. People don't care because the fabric of society is eroded and the essence of what makes a country and a culture is diluted to a point that it is almost non-existant. Those factors are correlated but not causally determined.

Its Selfishness... Selfishness that is encouraged, rewarded and enforced by capitalism finally takes its toll and destroys society. Everything is for the maximization of self-gain. Everything is for the individual. Despite the individual being part of the society outside.

> But all of this wealth is cloistered. No one’s investing in the public-facing world. There’s a broad cultural resignation—from the elites to the average person: “Why bother fixing the outside world? Just survive the workday and retreat into your private kingdom.” The mindset has shifted toward building personal fortresses rather than shared prosperity.

Because we've been fed a narrative that there's only "one right way" to care for the external world. For example, in my city of Portland, they recently revamped the public library. Was it done to make the beautiful building up to code so that people could enjoy books for a hundred years more until the next renovation?

Oh no... that would have 'exacerbated inequality'. Instead, we removed the books, shortened the bookshelves, and got rid of seating so that homeless men would have a place to walk around drugged-out and not be found masturbating behind tall bookshelves. That was the 'one true way' of using public funds, according to those in charge. Don't disagree or you might get labeled a fascist.

We see this all around the world. Just look at the reaction to Ezra Klein's book 'Abundance'. Such obvious solutions, things we can all agree on (I consider myself a conservative and enjoyed the parts of the book I've read). But if you look at the reaction it's getting, it's the same tired rhetoric. We are not allowed to have nice things. Wanting nice things is apparently chauvinistic, racist, classist, something supremacist, some other -ist, etc.

In the meantime, anyone who has not followed the 'one true path', has basically resigned themselves, and many have become actively resentful of the system writ large.

The commons are quite variable. Around where I live in London it's quite nice. I just rode the £18.8bn liz line which in quite jolly. On the other hand out in the sticks it's often less so.

That's it in a nutshell.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote something like below in this book Skin in the Game. It looks to me that there is a lot of inequality and unfairness hidden in the Europe.

"Consider that about ten percent of Americans will spend at least a year in the top one percent and more than half of all Americans will spent a year in the top ten percent[1]. This is visibly not the same for the more static –but nominally more equal –Europe. For instance, only ten percent of the wealthiest five hundred American people or dynasties were so thirty years ago; more than sixty percent of those on the French list were heirs and a third of the richest Europeans were the richest centuries ago. In Florence, it was just revealed that things are really even worse: the same handful of families have kept the wealth for five centuries."

And there is more quoted here: https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...