Cory Doctorow’s post ‘EXTREME WEALTH INEQUALITY WILL ALWAYS DEVOUR THE SOCIETIES THAT PRODUCE IT‘ and the associated longer piece ‘Shared Destinies: Why Wealth Inequality Matters‘ make an interesting point about a limit any society can accept in terms of inequality. They are worth reading.
He argues that there has always been some threshold beyond which societies undergo a readjustment – either peacefully or through more violent revolutions. “The more unequal a society is, the more out-of-balance its policies will be.”
Of course inequality is on the rise now after a historic low in the mid-20th century. The question is whether we are getting close to that threshold (as populist successes would imply) and whether this threshold is changing with new technology. In any case this issue needs to be addressed in particular as the economy sputters and does not manage to bring along some part of the population.
