"the Federal Reserve's obsession with generating a "wealth effect" by inflating bubbles in stocks and housing have enriched owners of capital at the expense of the young."
Unrealistically Great Expectations
By Charles Hugh Smith
Our expectations have continued ever higher even as the pie is shrinking..
Let's see if we can tie together four social dynamics: the elite college admissions scandal, the decline in social mobility, the rising sense of entitlement and the unrealistically 'great expectations' of many Americans.
As many have noted, the nation's financial and status rewards are increasingly flowing to the top 5%, what many call a winner-take-all or winner-take-most economy.
This is the primary source of widening wealth and income inequality: wealth and income are disproportionately accruing to the top slice of earners and owners of productive capital.
This concentration manifests in a broad-based decline in social mobility: it's getting harder and harder to break into the narrow band (top 5%) who collects the lion's share of the economy's gains.
Historian Peter Turchin has identified the increasing burden of parasitic elites as one core cause of social and economic collapse. In Turchin's reading, economies that can support a modest-sized class of parasitic elites buckle when the class of elites expecting a free pass to wealth and power expands faster than what the economy can support.
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Income Inequality
