What Future for Inequality?

Abstract

Because the struggle over inequality is the principal defining issue of history, it will also be the defining issue of humanity’s future. This concluding chapter briefly surveys reasons for pessimism and optimism concerning future inequality. On the side of pessimism, since the rise of the state 5,500 years ago, elites have almost always taken all of producers’ surpluses, leaving them with bare subsistence. Only partial delegitimation of elites’ ideology during the Great Depression led to 40 years of political measures reducing inequality. The resurgence of laissez-faire ideology and inequality over the past 45 years does not inspire optimism. Yet enormous progress has been made over the course of human history, and especially in the past several centuries. This has been especially impressive in the development of science and human critical faculties which privilege rule by reason. This book goes to press amidst growing awareness of inequality’s unfairness and negative consequences.