I think this is true as well and is a major force but banking is definitely a major factor. If you look at other sectors like technology or the stock market in general, you will realize that similar effects have taken place. All the quality public stocks have been priced out by reckless investors (very high P/E ratios); often using borrowed credit (or traders taking highly leveraged positions). Also, banking creates a centralizing force which drives people towards big cities. Since cities are where most of the newly issued loan money enter the economy. This is because taking a loan requires collateral and cities have a far higher concentration of capital/collateral to borrow against. People just follow the money at the end of the day regardless of capital efficiency; they go where the jobs are... The rise of bullshit jobs in big cities is a symptom of issues in banking. The current system has turned into a scheme; no economic value needs to be created for this scheme to work. It's all about new borrowers bailing out old borrowers with increasingly large loans... If there aren't enough new borrowers or they don't have enough capital to bail out the old ones, the government will simply step in to bail everyone out.