Consider a family with absentee parents. They work all day, every day.

BUT! They're in luck! There are TWO kids in the house to keep up with the chores.

The older brother is trusted in doing all the tasks for chore money.

But you, the younger boy, are getting old enough to do some of your own.

You enter the chore market. Your brother hires you to take some of the burden off of his shoulders. You at this point are entering an established business, and you don't really know how much anything costs. You sweep the floor, and get your dollar.

This goes along well, but as you grow older you need more. But hold on a second.

He is also growing older. The parents, you are sure, give him more money to do more chores.

He passes these extra chores to you. There is literally no reason for him to give you any more money, even while demanding more chores be done. Why? Because you're already working for a cost, and he can at any time just stop paying you. You have nowhere to go.

Why not appeal to the parents? They won't listen. As I outlined before, people are convinced of a totally wrong idea: That all wealth a person has belongs to them because it was earned by them.

The parents, the "market" are already entrusting all their money to that source.

And, importantly, your brother rigged the game. He has made it impossible to compete. Rules about when things can be done and why are alreayd written down by the family long before you entered the picture. And, well they're tired and it just takes SO LONG to change things. People operate under the force of inertia. They don't change unless they have to. To the parents, the system is fine.

So let's move on.

You say "I won't work."

He hires the poor neighbor kid.

You say, "I'll just do the work anyway."

He tattles and you get nothing, because your parents won't pay you.

You say, "Give me more or I'll ruin your business."

He shrugs it off, because the business needs doing.

Now, as I was saying earlier, some careers are totally immune to this. Let's say mom and dad need the PC fixed and he sucks with computers. You can hold that above his head. You have leverage. You say "pay me more or the PC will be broken and you won't get paid either."

Just like that, you have inflicted market forces on him. But, really, nowadays most people are not in jobs that can necessarily have that kind of leverage. Those that are often have unrealistic ideas about how the rest of the world lives. Not that all of them do, but my totally personal experience is more people that earn six figures are apt to say something like "go get a real job" or whatever.

Moving on.

As time goes on, your brothers business becomes the house colossus. He now manages all cooking, cleaning and grocery purchasing. He even gets the windows installed. At no time are you ever paid above the absolute bare minimum needed to prevent him from going through the hassle of finding someone else to do it.

Since you need money, and have nowhere else to go, you accept whatever he doles out.

And then, he tries to make you feel like you should be glad he gave you the job to begin with.

Now what does this have to do with money never getting into your hands?

Your brother, or the wealthy in this case, have control of the flow of money in their business. It used to be that you had to compete vigorously across all spectrums of business. Now, not so. Competition is live and fierce, but labor is weak because