In the long run (100,000 years), it isn’t whether anyone is rich or not, but what the species is contributing to its own resource world. The problem is not that there are super-rich people, but that the economic systems are based on extracting resources and sending the wealth to the minority’s bank accounts. Humanity needs to get over itself and learn to contribute more than it takes. Until that concept is ingrained in society, we are just rearranging the deck chairs for the rich to be more comfortable on the sinking environmental ship. The rich get richer because we work for them and buy their crap, and they put enormous amounts of money into keeping it that way. “The opposite of consumption is not frugality; it’s generosity.” -Raj Patel

“In a society based on competition, you inevitably get fewer and fewer winners and more and more losers.” -Wendell Berry

There are only two classes of people (in the U.S.): those who have to work to eat and those who never will. Let’s drop the pretense of “middle” and examine what the poor and the rich are doing for the planet. Taking wealth from the aristocrats always depends on having aristocrats. Leaving most resources on the land and near it is the only way for the poor to be useful to their own place and their children’s futures. In some distant future, we may colonize space, but we have to learn to maintain our home first.