The deepening of class divisions is structurally rooted in the cycle of production within the capitalist system. Since the minimum wage of the working class is always determined by the minimum required to reproduce labor power, while on the other hand, the wealth of capitalists accumulates through cycles of investment and production, class disparity continuously deepens. The outcome manifests in what is known as the Matthew Effect: the poor become poorer and the rich become richer. An initial inequality in wealth and resources gradually intensifies and deepens over time.

The existence of a despotic regime like the one ruling Iran—with monopolies and mafias, systematic and widespread corruption, absence of economic rights, deprivation of workers from their civil and union rights, and the imposition of rampant inflation—multiplies class disparity. But that is not the whole story. Class inequality should not be understood solely as a gap in income or wealth or merely from an economic perspective. Various sociological studies have clearly shown that poverty creates a vicious cycle. Poverty alters the environment, and in turn, that environment reproduces poverty in such a way that poverty persists from one generation to the next. Poverty creates a culture of poverty. For instance, impoverished neighborhoods and schools that lack adequate educational quality create a culture that reduces access to opportunities for the next generation of poor families.

This article focuses on a lesser-seen aspect of poverty and inequality reproduction in Iran: inequality in affordability and access.

Economically, as a result of a mafia-run economy and excessive inflation, the prices of essential goods increase each year while real wages decrease. Consequently, the shopping basket and affordability of the majority of people become limited to essential items. Thus, businesses that offer goods and services outside this limited basket (ranging from handicrafts, decorative items, and artworks to entertainment-related goods and services) are put at risk. Entrepreneurship and small businesses face the threat of bankruptcy, thereby reducing available job opportunities for the working class. As a result of this vicious cycle, many jobs disappear, and many entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and urban middle-class individuals become proletarianized—joining the ranks of wage laborers—or remain confined with limited job opportunities for the new generation of workers. In this way, the middle class continues to shrink.

Accordingly, the country’s consumer market becomes limited on one side to supplying essential goods for the masses and, on the other, to supplying luxury goods for the affluent class created by the regime’s economic mafia. Aside from the inequality in consumption, this situation destroys or degrades many jobs. A few small examples include the decline of job opportunities from running shops to street vending, from commercial platforms to small-scale online retail via social media, from tourism to immigration consulting, and so on. Simply put, the decline in people’s affordability to only essential items (if they can even afford those) destroys job opportunities, leading to increased impoverishment.

The regime’s economic mafia and the privileged class aligned with it also generate fewer job opportunities, as the luxury goods they consume are often imported, and the government agencies and economic enterprises under their control monopolize employment. Moreover, they transfer a significant portion of capital abroad, legally or illegally.

In the financial sector, the government controls foreign exchange, and the privileged mafia class, by possessing the majority of foreign currencies, controls exchange rates. By collecting and then suddenly injecting currencies into the market—thus manipulating prices—they extract large profits. The economic shocks resulting from these actions lead to higher investment risks, reduced investment in production, and rising prices.

This extreme inequality in affordability (reducing the purchasing power of the general population to essentials versus the extraordinary purchasing power of the regime’s elite) is accompanied by inequality in access to facilities and resources in the cities. The unproductive housing economy remains entirely under the control of the affluent class. The dramatic increase in housing prices in Tehran has not only taken away the ability of ordinary people to buy homes but has also made renting residential and commercial units unaffordable. As a result, people are being pushed from Tehran toward satellite towns in Tehran and Alborz provinces. These satellite towns provide almost no facilities for their residents, and the working class uses them merely as dormitories (as increased amenities would result in rising housing prices and another wave of displacement). As people are pushed into these remote towns, their access to resources, job opportunities, and entrepreneurship disappears. The great distance between their place of residence and work consumes their time and energy, leaving them with no capacity or opportunity to improve their conditions. Some of these towns are so remote that their residents’ social interactions with friends and relatives decrease, which negatively affects the social capital of the community. In short, diminished access has reduced the quality of life for Iran’s working class to mere survival.

Everything mentioned above is only a small window into the inequality in affordability and access. It can be confidently stated that the word inequality is insufficient to capture the depth of this divide. Through monopolies in trade and housing, rising rents for commercial properties, discriminatory licensing practices, restrictions on “outsiders,” control over the financial sector, and limiting access to even water and energy, the Iranian regime and its privileged class have made many economic activities excessively costly and financially unjustifiable. Therefore, the vast majority of people remain wage earners who are plundered each year by hyperinflation.