No Hope?
"What if inequality were to continue growing years or decades into the future? Say the richest 1 percent of the population amassed a quarter of the nations income, up from about a fifth today. What about half?"
To believe Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, this future is not just possible. It is likely.
A rather disheartening read about the seemingly inevitability of the rich controlling every aspect of society. Does not hold out much hope for any force - be it taxation, or a populist movement - to stop the growth of power that accumulates into the hands of the rich.
The author points out that even the French Revolution in the early 20th century did not achieve their hoped goal of redistribution:
France was a democracy and yet the system did not respond to an incredible concentration of wealth and an incredible level of inequality, he said. The elites just refused to see it. They kept claiming that the free market was going to solve everything.
That phrase, "the free market was going to solve everything" sounds very familiar.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/business/economy/a-relentless-rise-in-unequal-wealth.html?ref=business