Let's remove the top 1% from the equation who all are rich mostly due to a brand or company they created now come back to middle class and I am talking about wider scale not one or few in particular, their hopes are on savings and investments for their retirement so yeah investments makes people rich or atleast stable when they can't make anymore. But there's no compulsion that you should only be an investor, it's not even that hard, just keep working and spend a gery little time to plan your investment.