C'mon people, does it really take an advanced degree in Economics to reach this conclusion?
"The rate of growth of income from capital is several times larger than the rate of economic growth, meaning a comparatively shrinking share going to income earned from wages, which rarely increase faster than overall economic activity. Inequality surges when population and the economy grow slowly....the professional and political assumption of the 1950s and 1960s, that inequality would stabilize and diminish on its own, proved to be an illusion. We are now back to a traditional pattern of returns on capital of 4 percent to 5 percent a year, and rates of economic growth of around 1.5 percent a year....One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the capitalist world is heading again, he concludes."
On Adam Smith (and Karl Marx), NY Times, 4/19/2014, reviewing the NY Times best seller, "Capital in the 21st Century", by French Economist, Thomas Piketty
I believe for such a reason, God established in Israel "The Year of Jubilee", a sabbath of sabbaths (the end of every 49 years), possibly as a pattern to the entire world for dealing with the natural consequences of sped-up wealth accumulation -- exponentially increased concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, to the eventual detriment of the very foundations of society. In the absence of such, might cyclical 50-year disasters serve as a form of "re-set" to check unbridled wealth accumulation, typically motivated by raw greed? Here's the background on The Year of Jubilee, in Wikipedia.
"The Jubilee (Hebrew yovel יובל) year is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years), and according to Biblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in [ancient] Israel; there is some debate whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year. Jubilee deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According to Leviticus, slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. Leviticus 25:8-13 states:"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession."
