Jason DeParle writing in the NYTimes notes that people in the US are increasingly likely to remain rich or poor if their parents were. Furthermore, we are more likely than those of Canada and much of Western Europe. Those interviewed by DeParle note that both the extreme wealth of the US affluent and the extreme poverty of the poor pose impediments to mobility.

David MacKay has made his book “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” available without charge online. He has gathered a wealth of statistics about energy use and resources, and analyzed them with an eye to assessing how humans may live without degrading the environment upon which we rely. While an undertaking of this scope is almost certain to be rife with error and oversight, MacKay has provided a useful framework and foundation for thinking about the human condition and prospects. I see in his work evidence that we’re missing many opportunities to improve our lives by clinging to anachronistic understandings of how we may prosper. As we delay, we impoverish our future.

David MacKay FRS: Sustainable Energy – without the hot air: Contents

George Monbiot cites peer-reviewed scientific research to support an argument that people become wealthy largely as a result of luck, despite their own earnestly believed claims to the contrary, that the gap between rich and poor is widening, and that the actions of the most powerful, though touted as “wealth creation” by economists, actually result in wealth destruction.

George Monbiot – The Self-Attribution Fallacy

Scientists at the International Energy Agency, using conservative assumptions and data widely regarded as extremely accurate, assert that if humans continue existing trends in building “high-carbon” (i.e., fossil fueled) electricity generating facilities for only five more years, we will guarantee more than 2 degrees C. of global warming. Effects past this limit are difficult to fully predict. Scientists share a broad consensus that they will be dire. The authors of the report noted that subsidies by which we encourage wasteful burning of fossil fuels are now more than $400 billion annually.

World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns | Environment | The Guardian

What have been and will be the consequences of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few? In this chart we can see the degree to which we’ve concentrated wealth over the past quarter century. The top 1% and the next 4% of us have each reaped two-fifths of total wealth gain during that period. The bottom 60% of us have become less wealthy. To the degree that by concentrating wealth we limit individuals in contributing we are collectively impoverished.

How The Super-Rich Soaked Up All The Gains To Be Had In One Chart | MoveOn.Org