Many people are more worried about housing, jobs, and the supposed rise of Islamic influence than they are about the toxic impact of extreme wealth inequality.

If you feel this way, you are right to be angry about your economic security. But you are directing that anger at the exact wrong people.

Despite the mainstream media reporting and blame from politicians, the housing and jobs crisis is not caused by minorities or immigrants.

The housing crisis is the direct result of decades of state policies and the power of the commercial banks that turned homes into speculative financial assets for the ultra-rich.

What this means is that the ultra-rich treat housing like shares on the stock market. Thousands of the ultra-wealthy buy up houses and land in order to benefit from rising property values. Last year, the wealth of 3000 billionaires jumped its highest ever, $18.3 trillion in combined wealth — a large part of that wealth is from owning property like housing.

Everyday people are competing with ultra-rich property owners looking to buy their fiftieth house and are using global wealth and tax breaks so they can pay prices no-one relying on a salary could ever match.

Tax breaks for property speculators, big bank profits and a refusal to build public housing created this mess, not everyday working people and not immigrants.

As housing prices go up, more people are forced to rent. This allows the ultra-wealthy to “extract” your wages every month to pay off their own loans, further increasing the gap between you and the Epstein Class.

We are effectively ruled by this ultra-rich oligarchy — the Epstein Class. This group is a private, powerful elite of billionaires, politicians, and corporate executives who protect their own interests while extracting wealth from the rest of us.

Unlike the old-fashioned aristocrats, the Epstein Class is a highly exclusive elite where super-wealth and personal networks are currency to buy access, power and influence among each other.

Who is the Epstein Class? The billionaires, millionaire corporate executives and lobbyists that sit at the top of banks, media companies, multi-national corporate conglomerates, pro-market think tanks and lobbying firms.

They are distant, often invisible, unaccountable and intensely hostile to accountability, and they designed and financially benefit from the affordability crisis crushing your family.

To keep you from noticing they are robbing you, this elite Epstein Class relies on distraction, exploiting your real concerns to avoid scrutiny on themselves.

Billionaire-owned media and populist politicians manufacture cultural panics. For example, Australia’s main media outlets are owned by billionaires or ultra-millionaires:

• News Corp: owned by the billionaire Murdoch family
• Nine Entertainment: largest shareholder is billionaire media mogul Bruce Gordon
• Seven West Media: owned by billionaire Kerry Stokes
• Australian Community Media: owned by ultra-millionaires Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz
• Facebook & Instagram: owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg
• Twitter/X: owned by Epstein Island attendee, billionaire Elon Musk
• Tiktok: now owned by a consortium including Oracle (owned by billionaire Larry Ellison)

It is in their financial interest to spread fear of immigrants and “Islamic influence” to redirect your very real economic anxiety downward onto convenient scapegoats. The last thing they want is for you to ask why they own so much and profit so much when prices increase.

This is a classic divide and conquer strategy.

The ultra-rich Epstein Class spend millions to convince a worker making $35 an hour that their true enemy is immigrant worker making $25 dollars an hour or a person with a disability getting an NDIS package.

As long as we fight among ourselves, the oligarchs keep their power and can continue to siphon our money upwards to themselves.

While right-wing media commentators and politicians complain about immigrants and government spending, a handful of global mega-corporations like Walmart, Shell, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway have annual revenues bigger than over 150 countries.

This is why a wealth tax matters.

The real importance of a wealth tax is not about raising revenue to fund our public services, employ more health workers, or build more public housing. A wealth tax directly targets the extreme concentration of financial power that allows this unaccountable, ultra-wealthy elite to rig the economy and control our politics.

If you let the Epstein Class trick us into hating our neighbours, then they will continue to win — and become even more wealthy while everyday people suffer.

We must unite and direct our disapproval and anger upward, at the ultra-rich elites who actually control the system.