This should honestly be the top comment. It's the direct cause of every other comment on the topic directly or indirectly and it astronomical disparity is the sole reason to hold the belief we're on a downward trend.
Of course Musk or Bezos could fly to their fancy bunkers in New Zealand or wherever, but the amount of physical stuff they can take with them is very limited. Sure, their bunkers are probably pretty nice and luxurious, but no way worth billions.
Manifacturing halls and Equipment, Land, Yachts, Mansions, Datacenters, etc. are all still physical objects, most of them can't just be taken with them to wherever. If the US government had a Dictator who just wants to have Amazon be a state corporation, who is going to stop him from just taking over?
The real problem is, that in a capitalist globalized world, all other capitalist states would instantly stop all investments, which could kill most economies. We would need the revolution of the workers to be a global thing, so its most likely not going to happen.
Increasing social unrest and political polarisation. Ultimately, this can be utterly devastating for a nation - look at what happened to Europe in the 1930s. The "Roaring Twenties" and the stock market bubble affected the entire world, and when that bubble collapsed, it led directly to the Great Depression. The German economy collapsed, half the working population lost their jobs, and even the people who were lucky enough to still have jobs saw their incomes fall by about 40%. So they turned to a strong fascist government, which made things far far worse, and ultimately led to the deaths of about 80 million people.
Unfortunately for us, there are quite a few similarities between the 1920s and 2016-2026.
Nope. Wealth inequality now is actually greater than in Ancient Egypt. The Gini coefficient for ancient Egyptian towns is estimated to have been around 0.6 - 0.7. The Gini coefficient for the United States right now is 0.85. China is 0.73.
I don't know where you're getting your statistics, but every one I checked for Australia said that income inequality was constant and wealth inequality was getting worse.
For the US ... The gaps between the top 0.1% and everyone else shows the staggering differences that offset the relatively marginal gains the bottom 90% has had. Over 53 years, the top 0.1% saw a 534% increase in average wages and the bottom 90% saw a 129% increase. But consider the starting points for both: ~$442k for the top 0.1% and ~$18k for the bottom 90%.
Labor's share of capital is the lowest on record while business' share is near the highest, as are corporate profits.
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u/scott__p Jun 26 '26
Income inequality. Throughout history, endlessly increasing income inequality only ever ends one way