There has been much talk about how unacceptable the degree of financial inequality that there is in the US. And it seems to be getting worse and worse.
But what we have seems to be exactly what most people want in general. Probably the only part of it that most people would change is the part where they personally are not one of the fortunate wealthy few.
The lottery is the perfect example of a mechanism to achieve an unequal society.
Everyone buys a ticket for a small amount of money. The jackpot grows until it reaches $301 million. The winner is drawn. The result is one rich person with $301M and everyone else goes back to their regular life and stops dreaming about becoming that one rich person – for a week at least.
If that happens several times a year and everyone is either a winner or has a low to moderate job, then a vastly unequal society develops.
After one year, there will be 3 – 4 multi-millionaires and the entire rest of the population will have wealth that is a tiny fraction of those ultra rich. After a decade, the ranks of the ultra rich will have grown to 30 or 40. At that point, the top .000001% of the population will have .03% of the total wealth.
Each year, the country will grow more and more unequal, with a tiny fraction of the population commanding an ever growing proportion of the total wealth.
But that is why there is no uprising against the super rich. Everyone else believes that they might one day hit the lottery and win their position in that group. And when that happens, they do not want a tax regime, for instance, that will just take their riches away.
Riskviews 