Bad Finance

Not how this would work.

The difficulty with being suspicious of systems that one doesn't understand is that it's easy to imagine all sorts of malfeasance that can't actually take place. Anyone who has a general understanding of how finance works would realize that the scheme laid out in the meme above simply wouldn't work. But if all one knows about the topic is what one has been told about the workings of private equity companies, and how some of them have looted businesses they've purchased, it might seem that this is how it works.

It's the downside of the general pattern of disengagement that one sees in the United States, and it's one of the things that leads to such low social trust; the idea that people one doesn't like have found ways of enriching themselves that are barred to everyday people, and /or are simply shady/illegal.

But avoiding the trap means taking the time to understand any number of subjects that don't otherwise have any bearing on a person's day-to-day life. Which goes a long way towards explaining why comparatively few people make the effort.