1. Of the statistics given on p.29 of Michael Parenti’s Democracy of the Few, the most jarring was this: “The top 1 percent own between 40 and 50 percent of the nation’s total wealth […] more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.” But this statistic really hits home as Parenti drills down in the following pages.

• “The real wealth is with the very top superrich stratum, a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the population, some 145,000 individuals, who increased their aggregate income by almost 600 percent in the last three decades (adjusting for inflation). The real income earned by the bottom 90 percent fell by 7 percent.”
• “In the eight years from 2001 to 2008, the wealth of the richest 400 Americans had increased by nearly $700 billion for a grand total of $1.6 trillion, more than the bottom 50 percent (150 million people) combined.”

It’s the specificity of those numbers that makes such a big impression on me. 1 percent of 100 is simply a fraction. “400 Americans” is visual. That’s the size of my high school. That’s 2-3 subway cars at rush hour. The idea that such a small number of people could amass so much wealth is both mind-blowing and frustrating. I can’t imagine a proper justification for that great a disparity.

2. Such huge wealth inequalities imply that there’s an extreme power imbalance in the worker-capitalist dynamic. If there were a healthy balance, there would be more even economic prosperity across the board, or perhaps even faster growth in the bottom percentages as society redistributes wealth. These inequalities also indicate that the wealthiest are gaining even more leverage over the working class, making it easier to downsize, speedup, and downgrade.

This process of maximizing profits at the expense of the worker is evident in several industries, but perhaps most easily detailed in software engineering. With the rise of AI, the entry- and mid-level programmer positions at many of the largest tech companies have been all but eliminated, and the demands on the remaining employees are through the roof as employees are expected to utilize AI to exponentially increase their labor power without commensurate compensation.