Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [740]

It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 740

Note

A sharp economic insight phrased as policy: scarcity itself is manufactured because it makes privilege legible. The causal chain is crisp and unsettling.