It’s possible for the masses to be “poor” but not be starving in the gutter. Everyone might have an apartment, all the consumer gadgets they want, all the clothes they want, all the cheap food they want, all the movies and games and entertainment they want, and still be considered poor since they have no real control over the overarching shape of society.
This exchange from Chinatown illustrates what I’m getting at:
The “rich” of the future won’t eat better than the poor, they won’t have better clothes or fancier gadgets, they won’t have better entertainment. They won’t own factories or corporations or produce popular entertainment. Those things won’t be status markers in the future, just as Bill Gates’s wealth doesn’t come from vast estates and plantations.
The elite of the future won’t need to see the masses literally starving in the gutter, any more than middle class people of today get a thrill comparing themselves to third world peasants. The elite of today control manufacturing and communications and so on, but when manufacturing is no longer a source of wealth there’s no longer any reason for them to keep control over it. Bill Gates doesn’t buy farmland to make himself feel rich, and future elites will have no desire to control factories or keep the output of factories from the masses. They’ll just control “the future”, they make the decisions that matter, whatever those turn out to be. But it won’t be designing products or services for the masses to consume, those things will be regarded as not worth paying attention to since they’ll be churned out for next to no cost and there won’t be any way to make money creating them. The elites will be concerned with other things.