>A high density of tech billionaires in California doesn’t prevent

I put this in the case of 'eh, maybe'. Not a definite yes or no. The particular place where this breaks is asset ownership and other forms of VC fuckery that start raising the costs for everything around the country.

Money is power. Extreme wealth means extreme power. That power can be used to screw people over even if their income looks nominally decent.

But a high density of tech billionaires does prevent a regular family in Tennessee from putting food on their table, by increasing the poverty rates.

They do this by a number of mechanisms, including lobbying to reduce or end programs like SNAP, gutting labor protections, and various other political means; and more generally by making money in zero-sum ways (financialization of the economy means that people are getting rich by skimming off money from other people, rather than by creating value themselves).