James Coulter has a net worth of around $3 billion. He didn’t invent anything. He didn’t cure a disease. He didn’t build a product people love.
He got rich the old-fashioned private equity way: by buying companies with other people’s money, loading them with debt, firing workers, and cashing out before everything collapses.
Meet the man who turned human suffering into a business model.
Private equity is legalized looting dressed up in a nice suit. Here’s how it works:
You find a company that’s doing okay. Maybe it employs thousands of people. Maybe it’s been around for decades. Maybe it’s the backbone of a small town’s economy.
Then you borrow a ton of money to buy it.
Here’s the trick: you don’t pay back that debt. The company does. You just bought a house and made the house pay the mortgage.
Now the company is drowning in debt it didn’t ask for. So what do you do? You cut costs. And by “costs,” we mean people. Their jobs. Their pensions. Their healthcare. Their dignity.
You pocket millions in fees just for showing up. You pay yourself dividends from the company’s cash reserves. And when you eventually sell or the company goes bankrupt, you walk away richer.
The workers? They get a cardboard box and a security escort
The Luddites were right to be upset at technology because the rapid introduction of automated textile machinery directly threatened their livelihoods and the economic stability of their communities. Skilled workers who had long relied on their craft were suddenly replaced by cheaper, less skilled labor operating new machines, leading to mass unemployment, falling wages, and widespread poverty. The new factory system also undermined established labor practices, eroded job security, and forced workers into harsher conditions for lower pay, all while the government and factory owners prioritized profit over workers’ well-being. Their protests were not against technology itself, but against the way it was used to exploit labor and destabilize traditional ways of life without offering protections or fair compensation to those displaced.