In an announcement that shocked the financial world today, the US Fish and Wildlife Service stated that it is placing the super-rich on the list of endangered species.
In making the announcement, Francine Hesselstrammer, USFWS spokesperson, said that the numbers of truly super-rich people have been dwindling for some time and are now at alarmingly low levels.
“Please understand,” she said, “the remaining individuals in this population are perhaps the richest super-rich we have ever had in recent history, so that at least is somewhat heartening. However, the fact that there are so few of them is cause for genuine alarm.”
She went on to explain that super-rich people tend to propagate other super-rich people, either through normal biological function or by risky investments in new ideas that only they can afford.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “the current population of super-rich is behaving somewhat abnormally, in that instead of making more super-rich, they seem to be totally focused on being somewhat richer than the other super-rich.”
While the super-rich may seem to be a superfluous species to some, they are in fact a very important part of the overall economic ecology, as so many middle-class species are completely dependent upon them for their survival.
“We don’t quite understand what is causing this altered behavior,” Ms. Hesselstrammer stated. “There is the possibility that our domestic super-rich have inadvertently interbred with a species of South American super-rich. After all, he would be quite easy for them to hop a ride on a 150-foot yacht from some faraway port and mix with the domestic species.”
Numerous governmental programs have been put in place to try to expand the population of the super-rich, but, following the law of unintended consequences, this seems to have exacerbated the situation. Normally, when there are this many poor people around, the super-rich are drawn to exploit that fact and create more super-rich, but that does not seem to be happening this time around. Scientists and economists are baffled.
“Another theory is that there may be a shift in the characteristics of their natural enemies,” Ms. Hesselstrammer said. “Redistribution of wealth, normally caused by the local population of Democratic congressmen, does not seem to be having its traditional effect here. Again, we don’t really understand why that’s happening. ”
“This isn’t really a problem for them all by itself,” Ms. Hesselstrammer said, “but sometimes, when the population of super-rich dwindles to such small numbers, they risk experiencing a sudden and total extinction, similar to what we saw happen in France in 1792 and in Russia in 1917. We doubt that would happen here, but then again, those populations didn’t see it coming either.”
© Justin Locke
