* Growing economic inequality is an inherent feature of secularist neoliberal techno-capitalism.
* Proposed policies to address inequality may slow the rate at which inequality grows but are incapable of stopping it from growing.
* Economic growth itself appears to be slowing, making the elimination of poverty and the achievement of economic justice in general more difficult.
* Taken together, slower economic growth and growing economic inequality are a political hydrogen bomb.
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Growing economic inequality appears to be an inherent feature of industrial economies that depend heavily on technological innovation, free markets and globalization. While political and economic conservatives and libertarians tend to discount the extent to which growing economic inequality is likely to be radically destabilizing, political and economic liberals and progressives tend to discount how objectively difficult it will be to significantly reduce economic inequality using conventional economic and social policy tools.
Since 2008 economic growth in many countries has been slower than it was during the previous half-century. Most analysts say that technological innovation should eventually allow a return to pre-2008 growth rates, but a growing number argue that we are entering an era of permanently much slower rates of economic growth.
Permanently much slower rates of economic growth coupled with growing economic inequality is a political hydrogen bomb. The stability of industrial societies, whether capitalist, socialist or mixed, rests on an implicit bargain: so long as most of a country's citizens are experiencing some measure of real income growth, economic and/or political disparities will be tolerated. If such growth can no longer be expected, and especially if at the same time disparities of wealth and income are growing, modern industrial societies and their leadership elites will likely suffer crises of legitimacy.
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For more see the Working Paper Expanded Outline Sections II and III, Discussion Notes 1-9, 30, 84-91, 92-105 and 109-112, and Attachments A, B.1, B.2, C, D.2 and E.1. See also Background Materials Section II.B and Appendix 4.