Money couldn’t buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.

Milligan’s quip twists the familiar moral that “money can’t buy happiness/friends” into a darker social observation. Wealth may not create genuine affection or loyalty, but it can change the kinds of conflicts one attracts: envy, opportunism, and status-driven rivalries replace more ordinary antagonisms. The line satirizes class consciousness—suggesting that money upgrades one’s “enemies” in the same way it upgrades one’s surroundings—while also implying that social relations in a money-centered world are often transactional. As with much of Milligan’s humor, the joke lands by pairing a cynical insight with a brisk, epigrammatic punchline.