Many people learn better when the material their learning is visual and not verbal and vice versa for others. Let’s now attempt to make the best of both and verbally visualize what Real Economics is all about.

A key visualization in economics is the pyramid. The pyramid represents the categorization of economic classes and their hierarchies, which produce and consist of many of the concepts discussed in economics. Economies themselves are generally depicted as pyramids. 

In almost all cases, the pyramids are divided into horizontal sections with the highest section representing the upper class, the middle section the middle class, etc.. In our case we’re going to depict an economy not using sections inside the pyramid but using the shape of the pyramid itself. In our pyramid, similar to a traditional economic pyramid, the highest part of the pyramid represents the upper class with the most wealth and the lower parts of the pyramid represent the lower class with the least wealth. Except in our pyramid, differences are measured using the actual dimensions of the pyramid itself. 

Simply speaking, the farther the top of the pyramid is from the bottom, the more wealth inequality there is (without changing the pyramid’s overall area (the amount of flat space in the pyramid), as we’ll do soon below). In 2025, when this was written, the economy would probably be akin to the shape of the Transamerica building in San Francisco. For those not familiar, it’s simply a pyramid with its top far from its bottom, the state of transamerican economics today.

Let’s try to get a more clear picture. Imagine taking a standard pyramid and then pushing the top down (without reducing the pyramid’s area). You would get a wider pyramid with its top closer to its bottom. Now imagine taking an economy and pushing its top down (without reducing the economy’s size / wealth). You would get an economy with its top closer to its bottom. You didn’t push the wealthy people down, you pushed their wealth down (or practically speaking in the case of Real Economics, they themselves pushed it down at will), to the bottom. Think about that last sentence.

Now it’s important to note, the distance from top to bottom changes, as the area of the pyramid changes. Meaning, if the wealth of an economy (represented by the area of the pyramid) increases, then the distance, or difference from the top to the bottom, increases, but not necessarily does the inequality of wealth increase. As we’ll now see, we can actually keep the inequality low regardless of how we scale the economy.

Imagine now taking a standard pyramid and then pushing its top down as we did before. You would again get a wider pyramid with its top closer to its bottom. Now make the overall size of the pyramid bigger, which makes its area bigger. The distance between the top and bottom (the height) got bigger, because the pyramid itself got bigger, but the proportion, or ratio, between the top and bottom stayed the same. We achieved less wealth inequality but also more wealth, the hallmark of Real Economics. 

When we scaled up the size of the pyramid, we maintained the same ratio between its top and bottom; a greater distance from top to bottom but the same proportional distance between them. Similarly, if this pyramid were an exact representation of an economy, then making an overall economy bigger in size / increasing its overall wealth, would increase the difference (in the distance) between the top and bottom, but keeps the same ratio in that difference, meaning the top got wealthier but the bottom got wealthier in the same proportion that the top did. 

We reached a conclusion that reducing the height of our economic pyramid brings the top closer to the bottom, reducing wealth inequality in the most literal sense. Interestingly enough, as we reduced the height of the pyramid we naturally increased its width. Wide hips, strong ships. Fattening the economy doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, and less wealth inequality doesn’t either. 

Making the pyramid wider might seem like the lower sections representing the lower classes are expanding, but that’s not the case. The wealth can increase overall, to where the lower sections wouldn’t depict poverty-stricken people but wealth-stricken. In other words, the poorest of a wealthy economy can themselves be wealthy. The reason then, that they are represented in the bottom sections is simply because those above them are simply wealthier. And as mentioned in this section and the one previous, it’s because of widening the pyramid / moving the wealth of the top to the bottom that not only would produce this extra wealth but would also produce its continuity, the central idea of Real Economics. 

One effect that’s also produced from widening a pyramid is that the majority of the area of the pyramid is more towards the bottom and middle, meaning the wealth of the pyramid (represented by its area) is more among the majority than the minority. One way to visualize this is by continuing to widen the pyramid and bring the top closer and closer to the bottom, the area of the pyramid becomes less about minority and majority (hierarchy) but about equality. Everyone is wealthy with few more than others. This is a visualization technique in this specific case but by no means should be the goal of modern economies, as many economists have pointed out: wealth inequality (when not unbalanced) produces positive benefits that actually grow the economy by producing wealth incentives, which incentivises hard work, competition, which all incentivises innovation, which produces more opportunities, etc., etc..

Above, we wrote that through the process of Real Economics “we achieved less wealth inequality but also more wealth…”. Let’s talk about that for a second. How exactly, simply, does Real Economics reduce wealth inequality while increasing overall wealth? It is because of how we reduce wealth inequality that we are also able to project an increase in wealth. You see the pyramid has a bottom line just like you, and your business if you have one, also has a bottom line. And just like you and all businesses grow from the bottom line, from profiting in experiences or ventures (getting more out than you put in), so too the earth, the economy which is a function of the earth, and the pyramid which depicts both, also grow from the bottom line. 

When wealth goes to the absolute bottom (line) it doesn’t just grow from the bottom but into the rest of the system reaching up and back to where it was contributed from, whether from the top, middle, or bottom. And actually because of the network effects of wealth in an economy, whereby when one increases in wealth generally others do as well, it can be said that the entire economy is growing when anyone grows; the difference in growth from the bottom-line, from the earth, is that that’s where new growth happens (aside from new growth from human ingenuity) and most importantly it’s where continuity (of resources and therefore) of wealth happens, its where real wealth is produced.

On the contrary, when we don't grow earth's bottom line, we're not really growing our bottom line either. And more so, there is no middle and especially top of the pyramid without the bottom of it. And the stronger and wider the bottom is, the stronger and wider the top is as well. A wealthy economy that’s skinnier than it is wider means there’s less at the bottom and more at the top (where the earth and its environments are not), and possibly more unbalanced inequality of wealth. The name of this game is more so width than it is length. Interestingly enough, the wider the pyramid is, by pushing the top down, the larger its bottom-line is. It seems that growing the bottom-line comes from getting that top closer to it. Reducing wealth inequality through the Real Economic system of wealth redistribution gets us to an overall wealthier and more secure place to be.