"hey it's not so bad, the poor have showers now!"
- Sent from my iPhone
Well, the poor seem to have smartphones as well XD — Uganda for example has 54% smartphone ownership. But in terms of vaccination rates, education, access to clean water, access to electricity yes things are ever improving if we look at statistics on global wellbeing. "In 1981, 44% of the global population lived in extreme poverty. By 2019, that figure had dropped to just 9%." So inequality may be huge today, but it doesn't mean the bottom hasn't also risen dramatically.
Yes. Which is why the question of social responsibility of the rich matters far more, because they can't help getting involved in politics. And a lot of them seem surprisingly pro-collapse, or at least pro-authoritarian. It's a common pattern in South American countries where demands for rights and equality scare the property owning class, because they might have to share a bit with the general population; this results in coups, dictators, suppression of protests etc, which results in an equally violent retaliation. You don't get Castro without Batista.
Since the general agreement that money = speech = votes, the habit of rich people buying news media to be their personal propaganda (e.g. Bezos with WaPo, the Berlusconi media empire, Murdoch etc), has also made the world a lot worse.
AI accelerates the problem, since part of the pitch is "we're going to obliterate a large amount of white collar and lower middle class work entirely, while also removing the state safety net". Not clear whether that will actually happen as promised to the shareholders, but it could be hugely disruptive.
Then there's people's more local, lived experiences with landlordism and the minor rich. A particular local example I heard recently: https://www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-london-lawyer-bought-hu...
I'm more saying there's a sort of historical inevitability in the whole situation and we might benefit by taking that into consideration. And that some degree of nuance and tolerance of unfairness might play into a realistic solution.
Regarding landlordism, it's another tricky issue where yes there are bad big landlords, but the policies I've seen that put in place to tackle them tend disincentivize renting altogether and the first ones out of the market are the little guys, exasterbating the housing crisis in most cities. It seems to me an area where tolerating the bad actors is necessary to avoid crashing the whole system, to my point.