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In the last few decades, the concentration of income in the United States, Britain and Canada has reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. Such extreme income concentration created a dynamic that led to the disastrous Wall Street crash in 2008 - just as it did in 1929.
The financial collapse is simply the most striking example of the problems caused by the rise of a new class of billionaires. Their massive fortunes - widely considered benign or even beneficial to society -- are actually detrimental to everyone else.
The glittering lives of the new super-rich may seem like harmless sources of entertainment. But such concentrated economic power reverberates throughout society, threatening the quality of life and the very functioning of democracy. It's no accident that the United States claims the most billionaires-but suffers from among the highest rates of infant mortality and crime, the shortest life expectancy, as well as the lowest rates of social mobility and electoral political participation in the developed world.
Our society sees itself as a meritocracy. So we tend to regard large fortunes as evidence of great talent or accomplishment. Yet the vast new wealth isn't due to an increase in talent or effort at the top, but rather to changing social attitudes legitimizing greed and to policy changes made by governments under pressure from the new elite.
