My grandfather used to say he built his company one paycheck at a time. He meant it literally. He made refrigerators in a plant outside Cleveland in the years after the war. That factory hummed like a living thing. Thousands of workers. Hundreds of delivery trucks. Lunch pails, union jackets, Friday pay envelopes, and the annual company picnic where the supervisors handed out awards to the line crews. He used to brag that every fridge sold put a little money into the pocket of every man who made it and every man who made it put a little pride into the fridge.

His wealth came from them. If their wages rose, sales rose. If their children did well, the town did well, and then the company did well. He never pretended otherwise. He knew exactly who made him rich. He treated the workers like partners because, in that world, they were.

When my father took over, things were different. He did not live through the Depression or the war. He grew up in a bigger house, went to college, and came home wearing a suit instead of a welding mask. He loved the company, but he loved the numbers more than the people. He closed the old plant and opened a newer one in Tennessee because the corporate accountants said it would cut costs. He hired fewer workers because the new machines needed fewer hands. He talked about efficiency in a way my grandfather never did.

He still depended on the American middle class, though. He needed families with paychecks to buy the appliances. He needed suburbs full of homeowners. He needed banks making loans to people with stable incomes. He needed a country that still rewarded work. His world was shifting, but the old logic had not yet died.

My world is nothing like theirs. I do not run factories. I run capital. My money comes from investments, overseas partnerships, licensing agreements, global supply chains, and software that predict what consumers in Jakarta or Mumbai might buy next year. I own pieces of companies that make things in countries I will never visit. I earn more in a week from the movement of stock prices than my grandfather earned in a year of running his entire operation.

The truth is almost uncomfortable to say out loud. My income no longer depends on American wages. It does not depend on American stability. It does not rise and fall with the fortunes of the towns where my grandfather built his empire. I do not need to walk through plants or shake hands with the people who make the product. Most of them are not in America anymore. Many of the companies I own do not even make physical products at all.

I make money when factories move overseas. I make money when companies automate. I make money when wages stay low and profits stay high. I make money when interest rates fall and asset values climb. I make money every time a job is done by software instead of a person. I make money from the global consumer, not the American worker.

This is the part no one wants to hear. I am not your partner. I am not your neighbor. I am not your employer. I am not tied to your success the way my father was or the way my grandfather was. My fortune does not rise when yours does. My fortune rises when the system becomes more efficient, more global, more automated, and less dependent on you.

I remember listening to politicians talk about protecting the middle class, as if men like me were still bound to it. They do not understand that the middle class is no longer the engine. It has become a market segment. A cost. An input to be managed. The top ten percent now drives most of the purchasing. The world’s middle class outside America drives the rest. My money comes from them, not you.

My grandfather needed you. My father still needed you, though he tried to need you less. I do not need you at all. And neither does anyone in my world. Our companies do not rise and fall with your prosperity. They rise and fall with global capital flows, interest rates, supply chains, algorithms, and markets that stretch across oceans.

If this feels like a breakup note, that is because it is.
We shared a life once.
We lived in the same country and depended on one another.
But the world changed and we followed it.

So here is the truth, stripped bare.
It is not personal.
It is structural.
It is economic.

We are not together in this anymore.
We moved on long before you realized it.

And now, finally, I will say the quiet part out loud.
We don’t need you anymore.