1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-rich...
>"The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich."<
In 1911 the Xinhai Revolution in China, which the quote alludes to, demonstrates what is possible when income disparities reach a tipping point...
Leaves me wondering what's truly possible if the "global economy" ever truly begins a move in the direction of a global stasis...
That is just the reason, many countries and many people of a specific fraction already arm themselves against revolutions.
What fantastic innovations are robots and drones!
Further, drones are still limited to mostly open spaces. You can't clear a room with a quadcopter (yet), and a Predator missile strike is just as likely to kill loyal citizens as it is to kill the target.
Tanks are easily outmaneuvered by humans on foot. Planes cannot take a building and leave it intact. Drones have electronic weaknesses in addition to the usual flaws. And nukes are practically a joke--the fallout, physical and political, would ruin any nation.
TL;DR: Drones make terrible soldiers. Why do you think ISIS is still live and kicking?
Sun Tzu's slightly-less-famous quote--"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight"--has two meanings, like a lot of Asian philosophy does. The obvious part is, as the saying goes, sieze the day. The less obvious part is that you should only sieze the day if you know you can hang onto it.
In the case of nukes, only a damn fool would nuke his own food supply or factories, or perhaps a spiteful loser.
I don't know much about economics, so sorry if I'm off base. It's just the statistic "XX people have more than YY% of people" gets thrown around in discussions, and I'm curious if it's cause for concern or just an economic fact.
The parent poster implied, that by increasing the wealth of some, all will benefit. In my country, this was not the case in the last 20 years. The middle class that was rather broad and healthy, is loosing particularly in the less wealthy part -- many of those people fall down the ladder and are poor and will be even poorer when they are in old age.
My country once was one of the wealthiest of the world, because many people where wealthy and earned good money. It was unthinkable once, that big parts of the society might be poor or have to live from "soup kitchens" -- today it is reality and all projections show, that it will become even worse!
To be complete: My country is still one of the wealthiest of the world -- but with a much much smaller fraction of people owning the biggest part of this wealth.
At a very basic level comparing wealth between economies requires all sorts of subjective normalisation which is pretty open to challenge, and accounting for things like student debt is obviously going to be contentious.
Frankly I consider it surprising that you can even find the calculation methodology for something like that.
Population and automation proliferation both make humans less and less relevant, and non-altruistic behavior by rich and powerful is hardly ever punished because they have all the advantages. We sure do crack down hard on non-altruistic behavior committed by those in poverty, though.
Even if we could all magically decide to cooperate and work together to eg end poverty & war, the modern human way of life (infinite growth) is at odds with the reality of planetary ecology. We don't do moderation well, as a group.