"The financial collapse, depression, and two World Wars destroyed the wealth and thus power of the rich, and made it...

"The financial collapse, depression, and two World Wars destroyed the wealth and thus power of the rich, and made it possible to put in place policies which were hostile to their interests and which made it so that more of national income was distributed to ordinary people."

"Political decisions are important: in 1929 Hoover, the Fed, and later FDR did not bail out the rich.  They were allowed to lose their money, and thus much of their power.  That was a decision: another decision could have been made, and in 2008 it was made: the rich were bailed out.  It was made differently in 2008 because the rich have spent the last 80 odd years obsessing over what went wrong in 1929 that allowed FDR, the New Deal and everything which flowed from it. Ben Bernanke’s entire career was “how do we make sure the rich don’t lose their money so that FDR doesn’t happen.”  He was chosen to be the Fed Chairman precisely to ensure that the next Great Crash, which everyone who wasn’t an idiot knew was coming, wouldn’t wipe out the rich."

http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-age-of-the-obvious-thomas-pikettys-capital

The Age of the Obvious: Thomas Piketty?s Capital - Ian Welsh

The economist Thomas Piketty, who along with Emmanuel Saez has done great work on the concentration of income, has written his magnum opus, Capital(pdf).  The title is an obvious reference to Marx's Kapital, and the book is a huge survey of 200 years of economic...