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The quaint wealth gaps of history

I was at National Museum of Fine Arts the other week and one thing that struck me was the wealth gaps on display. Palaces and kings on some paintings, people dying in the streets on others.

“How quaint”, I thought, as I was thinking that the ultra-rich of today could buy and sell such palaces as if they were peanuts, and it’s still built on the backs of the worker class.

We’re living in the time of the biggest wealth gaps of all time. This has gotten way worse within the last few decades, too.

It’s runaway exploitation.

We have the most messed up environment of all time, too. We have a lot of work to do towards saving the Earth.

I’ve said this a couple of things before, but in practice, capitalism is turning out to be the worst system ever tried. It seems good as we’re in our cushy sofas watching cartoons but a lot of the wealth it creates is stolen from our working poor, from slaves in the prison labor system, from global exploitation, and from our own future generations as we’re plundering the Earth.

Update (October)

Salaries are increasing at a slower rate than prices, leading to net virtual decrease of around 6.2% here in Sweden. So wealth gaps are continuing to increase at a rapid pace.

Five big Swedish labor unions announcing that they’re gonna be suuuuper careful in the upcoming round of negotiations to help curb inflation. That’s not necessarily the wrong decision, but what I really wanna see is tax hikes for the ultra rich, to make money more valuable.

My union wasn't among those five.