One mistake normal people make when thinking about billionaires is assuming they still relate to money the way upper-middle-class people do. They do not. For a household making $90k, another $50k changes life materially. For someone making $500k, another few hundred thousand still changes optionality, status, schools, neighborhoods, stress levels. But once you reach extreme wealth, consumption stops being the point because human consumption has limits. There's only so much you can buy and you reach a ceiling fairly soon.
A billionaire does not need a seventh mansion in the same way a normal person needs healthcare or lower rent. The difference between $40 billion and $70 billion is not lifestyle. You can have a ton of mansions and yachts at that level That level of wealth behaves more like geopolitical power than personal finance. What starts mattering more is relative ownership: what share of assets, institutions, land, media, infrastructure, political influence, and future cash flows you and your friends controls compared to everybody else. And once you understand that, a lot of elite behavior starts making more sense.
A shrinking economy is not bad for the ultra-rich if their share of ownership increases during the contraction. If the economy drops 15% but asset distress lets major capital holders consolidate even more housing, companies, farmland, media, or infrastructure, they can emerge from the downturn more powerful than before despite the overall pie getting smaller. They won't sale yachts, mansions... Nothing changes in their day to day, but it does change in ours. Normal people experience recessions as traumatic events. Large capital often experiences them as acquisition environments.
That is why periods of instability frequently accelerate concentration instead of disrupting it. Covid, for example, made billionaires richer than ever before. Workers lose bargaining power. Assets get repriced downward. The people already sitting on enormous reserves gain leverage over everyone who suddenly needs cash, credit, or employment.
So, next time someone tells you that having the country led by businessmen or billionaires is great because they know how to run a business, maybe bring up that the economy does not need to do well for them to benefit. In fact, often a poorer economy, ideally with less regulations, is ideal for those that already own such big pies of it. It forces middle classes to sell their shares at discount to get money for mortgages, for groceries... All while they don't face any pressure to sell for any reason.