High Levels of Youth Unemployment – and Runaway Inequality – Cause Riots
Recipe For Disaster
We’ve known for 1,900 years that runaway inequality destroys societies.
The great American historian Will Grant wrote in 1969:
In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
A 2011 study this month by economists Hans-Joachim Voth and Jacopo Ponticelli shows that – from 1919 to the present – austerity has increased the risk of violence and instability.
Peter Turchin (professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and an adjunct professor in the departments of Anthropology and Mathematics at the University of Connecticut) pointed out in 2013 that inequality is cyclical, skyrocketing until – periodically – revolution forces concessions from those who have grabbed all the wealth.
Indeed, leading institutions and economists all over world warn that runaway inequality could cause violence and unrest.
For those who work for a living, the level of inequality in America today is arguably the highest in world history.
A high level of youth unemployment is also a leading cause of riots. As we noted in 2011:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
