[throwawaye3735]

Yes you really do lose your wealth. Managing wealth is an active and very difficult thing. People all around the world are trying to steal your wealth and they are super motivated to do it. Everyday there is someone saying "you have to buy this next big thing - give me your money." This is how the luxury market works.

Even if you were very frugal and stuck your money in the bank you would lose that money to inflation. Even if you were smart and put it in real estate or Bitcoin or something else you still have to manage it and manage yourself to not make mistakes with it. Managing wealth is a very hard problem.

And we are actually talking about at a country level here - if a powerful country doesn't innovate and continue growing they become england. Then eventually a bigger more powerful country like china eats them if they don't have powerful friends.