The widening wealth gap is the ongoing process of exponential economic growth on the part of the very wealthy and less rapid growth on the part of everyone else. This causes problems of wide spread corruption, as was seen in China during its pivot towards the free market in the ’80s and ’90s.
While this gap persists, the very rich can effectively rule the government through bribes and coercion. Their money also allows many upper class people to escape the punishment they deserve. This is illustrated brilliantly in the acquittal of OJ Simpson, even though the evidence was stacked against him. Interestingly enough, this was won by law team led by Robert Kardashian, the head of a family that would become know for its vast wealth.
Of course, people do not care about this nearly as much as they should. People are far more concerned with immediate social rifts and tensions, because they seem much more pressing, are much more polarizing, and happen in a much more rapid manner. Meanwhile, the wealth gap gets wider and wider. People will stand by and watch their rights be stripped away and the justice system supposed to protect them bastardized if it is done slowly. People, normal people, need to stand up and attempt to slow the growth of the divide between the very rich and everyone else before our world transforms into a true dystopia akin to those only seen in stories like 1984.
This does not have to go on forever, but we should not try to redistribute the wealth and assets of the wealthy, for to steal makes us no better than them. There are other ways, like higher taxation rates for the more wealthy coupled with lower taxes for the lower and middle classes in order to let those classes with slower development time to catch up. Also, a reconstruction of our government to remove, at least partially, money from politics would go a long way to purify the institution from the corrupting influences of the wealthy in this country.
Forget gender. Forget race. Forget petty politics and ideological allegiances. The wealth gap is a problem endemic to all human societies since the first civilizations cropped up, and we cannot let it get worse after we’ve made so much progress alleviating poverty and bringing rights to the masses. It is not going to be easy, but only We, the People can do it. And we can only do it united as one.
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