This concept is reminiscent of the ancien regime in France before 1789, or in Russia before 1917. The top 1% gather to themselves more and more money, land, social status and political power, which they proceed to abuse with a display of selfishness and greed disgusting to the other 99%. The aristocrats/plutocrats/oligarchs always fail to notice that they are sealing their own fate. Is that really a true representation of the UK today? Or do we have a few years to go yet? Or is the outcome still avoidable?
The thing is that currently, the rich are getting richer, but the poor are getting poorer. So long as you have a job, you probably don't really have the time to do anything radical about the injustice, especially in a democracy where you are pretty much allowed to say what you like. Where the situation becomes more explosive is when you find a huge section of the population out of work and with no real prospect of finding any. This is exacerbated if the unemployed are young. They might feel that they have nothing much to lose by pressing for violent change. Is this not partly the case with what has recently happened in the Arab world? And they have all the time in the day to devote themselves to revolutionary activities. I wouldn't be at all surprised if something fairly radical happened in Spain or Greece. The unemployment there is massive, and that doesn't look likely to change any time soon. The young are disproportionately unemployed. In the UK, it is clear that there are still plenty of people making plenty of money. It's not like only 1% is well off. But for most of the population, they are probably worse off now than they were 10 years ago and that isn't likely to change very soon either. I think that yes, people will get pissed off with it. The last economic boom was credit-fuelled. Credit is now maxed out, people are paying it off. They are also warier. So what is going to finance the next boom? I currently can't see it.
Glidd, great summary. You are no officially allowed to say "I told you so" to the politicians when the excrement is applied liberally to the ventilation system. Which I suspect it will and possibly in our lifetime.
