It's been true my entire adult life.

When I came to Canada almost 30 years ago, IT-job immigrants, let alone people who've grew up in this system were already doing 'buy real estate, rent it out, profit' and their day job was just a means to finance becoming a permanent rent seeker.

Pikachu surprise face that a culture that thinks rent seeking is great ends up doing it everywhere, all of the time, including Amazon.