There are eerie similarities to the late 19th century and the early 20th century but there has been opportunity with it.
I for one started with nothing, had my first good paying job when I was 36, retired 12 years later. I'm no robber baron. I was a middle level employee in a high wage industry. My friend Bob was born with MS. The best he ever did was watch a security monitor at an airport. Yet he retired with a 7-figure account from a lifetime of investing in the stock market. It isn't how much they pay you. Its what you do with it.
Here in Seattle, people who work for MSFT, AMZN, FB, GOOG for pharma companies, service companies, energy companies, lots of non-tech companies are not complaining. Young people with a good education and the right skills can buy $1Million homes with one income. They don't look like $1Million homes in lower cost of housing places but they are nice places to live and far from shacks. If they have two incomes and some equity to carry forward a $2 Million house is not out of reach. Those are nice homes in any location. They have the cars and vacations to go with them, the healthcare, and retirement plans.
Bezos commented in an interview; "People complain I have so much money. I own 14% of AMZN which is today worth $1 Trillion. What they don't discuss is it means I made $860 Billion for other people."
There are warehouse workers at AMZN who think they should be doing better but how much can you pay ten's of thousands of people for picking boxes off conveyer belts? Its a low skill, low education job. You can't pay $100K a year for that and stay in business.
There are winners and losers in any economy. As a worker you have to make yourself valuable. A big income is not an entitlement. A job application is - if the company can hire you. There is always competition for skill, and competition to be one of the skilled. You are paid what you are worth to the company, what you can contribute to its success and economic health and you participate accordingly. That's my experience.
There are excesses but the incentive to be rich is a powerful motivator that creates opportunity. That's the economy I want to work in.
Gates, Buffett, Bezos. Robber Barons? Hardly. Gates was a predatory monopolist. He paid for it. Buffett is exceedingly decent and Bezos earned it, lifting the economic health of tens of thousands of people with him. Ask any of the 60,000 people in his offices in Seattle, New York, Nashville, soon to be Northern Virginia. Now all of three of them are or will give away their fortunes, couple of hundred $$Billion. That will do a lot of good - no good at all if they didn't live in an economy than enabled them to earn it. Take all the wealth from people who did well and a lot of people besides them would have a lot less and a lot more people would suffer.
The government provides with your own tax money. Many of the rich give away massive amounts of their wealth, often doing a better job of it. Some of it for things the government won't provide because it isn't politically expedient - that is it doesn't get them elected or keep them in office.
There are generous and greedy people, honest and dishonest people at all strata of the economy. The economy is bigger than all of them. If you aren't happy where you are, you can only count on yourself to do something about it. No amount of whining is going to change it. You don't want to be poor. If you want to be one of them - be one of them. The only thing stopping you is you.
