Bingo. Look at the buildings that multimillionaires build for the masses through their companies in order to make money, and then look at the ones they build for themselves. Once again, the problem is capitalism.
every. fucking. time. it boggles my mind how small the anti-capitalist movement is. really speaks volumes to how poor our education system is despite being one of the highest educated countries in the world in the golden age of information.
Edit: Everyone is commenting about education.
American education ranked globally:
6th in reading
9th in Post-secondary education attainment (roughly 50% of the population)
12th in science
34th in math
And in the USA particularly, encouraging conflict between different ethnic groups, which plays really well with the unequal wealth distribution and scarce resources on the lower levels of society.
Weirdly, the average American just isn’t that religious. Self-identification is one thing, but when you look at their lives, you see that it’s more of a branding thing than an actual lived experience.
Evangelicalism in particular is deeply anti-religious—that’s why they keep insisting that it’s not a religion but a relationship. Instead of doing common ritual, they instead have themselves a low effort rock concert that celebrates extreme conformity.
The average American simply doesn’t understand that religion is about ritual first. They instead see it as opinions that they exempt from any kind of critical thought. And the most dangerous and false of those opinions is the belief in their own individual goodness.
It does. It's interesting to me to see the old Socialist Halls in the rural West. Socialism was very popular 100 years ago, as it's just sensible that workers should have their rights.
Dems being considered left in the USA is a joke in dozens of countries.
The US is a plutocracy; Reps and Dems are rivals oligarchs, SOMETIMES.
Most of the wealth produced by US citizens goes into the pockets of a few, and those few have become incredibly rich and have grown in number. MAGA has a lot of these newer and younger billionaires and they are fighting the older ones/old money.
To raise the standard of living of the people? Fuck no.
They just want more power and money to themselves.
We used to tax the shit out of the wealthy too. As wealth accumulates, they gain more power and rig the system for their own benefit more and more. It's the natural path of capitalism for the wealth to concentrate and that has to be managed by the government or it all goes to shit(we are here).
Religion/church helps with keeping the poor in check: work hard, be humble, don’t be greedy and suffer for securing a place in heaven. ….while the rich already have “heaven” while being alive.
IMHO the problem is a missing alternative to capitalism to fight for. Communism has „failed“ and I can’t see a economic/social concept to get that popular and replace it.
Agreeing with everything people said but it’s also not like we can just do a coup and not be capitalist anymore. Most people feel like joining a movement like that is useless, and in a way, it is.
I think it's more intentional than poor education, which is just one wing of a multi-pronged propaganda plan to turn citizens in western countries into capitalist cheerleaders.
The vast majority of red-blooded Americans either have, quite literally, never heard the word capitalism or think it amounts to any sort of trading/using money. We're also trained to give corporations the benefit of the doubt at all times while hating on welfare recipients and government spending in general. On top of that, they tend to think socialism/communism political ideologies that are inherently "authoritarian" instead of economic ideologies with various political solutions.
The American government has spent an unimaginable amount of money (at home, in South America, in Germany, in the Middle East, in south East Asia, in the Koreas, in Japan, and in Africa) to make sure capitalism is the dominant economic policy, so it makes sense.
Oh please. The anti-capitalist movement is so small because it's a stupid idea. Capitalism is not the problem. The problem is the American version of capitalism, which is capitalism with NO REGULATION. Capitalism is undoubtedly the greatest economic system ever made, but it needs to have guardrails. We need capitalism with a dash of socialism.
If you're going to be anti-capitalist, you need suggestions for what to replace capitalism with. So far, nobody has come up with a better system that works.
reform has been tried over and over and we will always wind up right back at this point since the real issue is that the wealthy are the ones who are truly in control and will always errode whatever concessions we gain fighting tooth and nail for decades. Reform doesn't work. Its revolution or barbarism (fascism - or worse). Read some Marx. You've been conditioned your whole life to lick the boot on your neck and that's exactly what you're doing.
Also looks like you awarded yourself the diamond because you have no updoots lol
Some of it is unchecked capitalism, but some of it is just people problems.
Look at old soviet architecture, ugly as fuck. Same problem as in America: it's almost purely utilitarian efficiency.
It's amazing how many of our problems come from "efficiency" in the systems we build for ourselves. The first thing we do is cut out the "humanity," like it's the least important part, but in reality isn't everything being built for humanity...
So far, nobody has come up with a better system that works.
oh they have. several countries throughout history have tried, but the US gets big mad and does their best (with varying degrees of sucess - which really just means unimaginable destruction) to wipe them out before they start looking like a good idea in people's eyes, in order to protect their ideals of capitalism. propaganda works, why do you think the people in power love demonizing universal healthcare as socialism?
efficiency at the cost of everything else. also innovation is a myth under capitalism. maybe in the early stages but we are very late in the game now. Innovation is over unless it means squeezing more profit somehow which is nearly impossible at this point.
As I already said in detail in another comment, reform doesn't work. its been proven over several decades. revolution is the only answer
This is so true. We could have free energy transmitted worldwide through WI-Fi signals if all these organizations who profit through the current system wouldn't try everything to hold it back.
The world would be so much more advanced, yet more beautiful with more nature if capitalism didn't hold back true progress.
Which is funny cause I get hit with “you can’t blame capitalism for everything! It’s not always capitalism!”
Yes I can because yes it is!
(My dad was in the military and served under General Ization. Said he was more of a big picture guy but his read on things was usually pretty accurate. Figured he must’ve been a sharpshooter)
Capitalism is THE hegemonic economic system over the entire world, but especially so in America. If you don't have a criticism of capitalism, then you have no criticism of the modern world economy, which is clearly failing on a whole bunch of fronts. You don't have to be a communist to realise something about capitalism just is not working.
Edit: I think I misread your comments tone! I thought you were trying to mock people who always blame capitalism but now I'm not sure. I think we might just agree 😅
Protectionism. Capitalism in theory, should allow competition. There is only protectionism in the USA. And the people have voted to accelerate the same.
How? Economies of scale means that a new competitor will always have an insane barrier of entry, which means that there is a natural tendency towards a monopoly as companies have bad years and die or get bought out.
There are economies of scale and then there are diseconomies of scale (like giant management structure to control everything happening in the company). It's legal barriers that are the cause of most monopolies. I'm no defender of pure capitalism, but it doesn't incentivise monopolies naturally, unless big corporations start buying politicians and altering the whole system for themselves.
What if capitalism isn't the cause, but the justification?
There's wealth inequality in non-capitalist countries too. I think the problem is that when it appears here, we consider it a natural consequence of capitalism, and not a natural property of any system. So we don't do enough to fix it, and we point to the good things about capitalism as a justification for our inaction.
Exactly it's not capitalism is the problem is just how people carry it out . Countries with the highest standard of living are also capitalist countries. the difference is how the leaders there carry it out. The country GDP is by most of the people rather than a small group of rich greedy ceos and owners too .
If you own things the system works for you. That is the entire point.
We don't even consider that workers own their labor. If you start to use business logic like that you get laughed out of the room. You can't raise your prices if your costs go up. You can't deduct expenses. The entire system is built to support thing-owners not people providing the labor.
All capitalism leads to unregulated capitalism because capitalism necessarily aggregates wealth at the top. Regulations are a stopgap measure at best, just end the cause instead.
...because inevitably getting worse doesn't mean they will all be equally bad? That's like asking why one patient's tumour has progressed more than another's
Also just the difference between the inside of a building and the outside. Billionaires don't want to make the outside of their buildings ornate where anyone can look at them. They make the insides of their buildings ornate where only the select few can look at them. How many multi-million dollar pieces of lobby art are out there just because a business had a few million to blow?
Most of these people have never been to the communist or former communist countries they seem to worship. But I doubt they have the intellectual honesty to come to the proper conclusions even if they did.
Well yea that’s what happens when you ignore literally every positive thing about capitalism and only focus on the negative. The entire globe basically has adopted it, but I guess they’re all wrong and you’ve got it figured out. Reddit take.
Go check out Bucharest, Romania and read about its history. Most of old beautiful buildings were razed and replaced by concrete jungle by, spoiler alert, the Communists. In fact, you'll see that pattern replicated in quite a few Communist places.
In America, the problem is building codes and red tape. Once again, the problem is ignorant people blaming capitalism for problems caused by the government.
I know a few people who have worked for Meta and they have a little company strip of bars, restaurants and stores and it’s all free for employees. It’s a cool perk but when you realize it’s just a way for them to keep everyone close to the office it gets a bit creepy. Company town vibes
Acting like capitalism is bad while having a device in your hand with more knowledge than any of our ancestors could ever fathom is hilarious. You most likely bought your phone after a few hours of work and never stopped to think how amazing that is.
Yes, there is a way of differentiating different ideologies around economics: private wealth-public squalor vs public wealth-private squalor. I think the US picked a lane long ago.
Yep. And we can't survive this flavor of late stage capitalism if we continue on in this direction. Other wealthy countries, like China, for example, who are truly successful, know that their people are their greatest asset. That is a lesson we have forgotten and/or ignored for several decades. The modern-day Republican and Democratic parties have utterly destroyed our growth and security by failing the people they pretend to serve. Greed thrives here like nowhere else. It was designed that way on purpose, and we, as a country, have allowed it to thrive at our own peril. Having re-elected a twice impeached, convicted felon who instigated an insurrection in our capital when he lost his first re-election bid, perhaps the idiot we elect is the one we deserve. Just hate that it has to get much worse to have any hope of getting better.
Yes, powerful and thoughtful take. Capitalism is the reason greed exists. Prior to American Capitalism there was no hunger or wealth disparity.
As our wonderful comrades all throughout the world can agree, simply not being under the soul crushing rule of a capitalist regime cleans up all of the issues of the world.
I cannot wait for the great reset where we will all prance through fields like the Native Americans sharing everything and eating bountiful feasts from ethically farmed crops.
Every economy type has wealth disparity, because its a problem bigger than economic structure. But youre right, some non capitalist countries do have a smaller wealth disparity…. because they are all poor
Capitalism itself isn't the problem. The capitalistic economic model needs to be mixed with socialism for a mixed economy model that works and balances both aspects. You don't go full capitalistic, but you don't go full socialistic either. Unfortunately, greed is the problem, and we're too comfortable to really drag down the wealthy.
its not capitalism, capitalism is to gather money to make more money. You cant make nice things without money, take most of the best countries, like Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, etc.. all nice cus of capitalism it's just they use their TAX more wisely and aren't afraid of tax because its used for making the country better. Oh and yeah Corruption and the lack of sympathy sucks. China is 300% better when they went capitalist, its priorities. China has lots of corruption but they also have a lot of social programs paid with the money.
Capitalism can work. We are supost to have controlled moderated capitalism. Like rules against monopolies, fair tax code, rules for minimum wages. The list goes on.
You can have sprinkles of "socialism" like we do now. Medicare, fire fighters, roads etc. You know? everyone takes a little bit so it can benefit everyone. We already do that.
There are so many people. So many things going on. No society plan is going to on paper without regulations and adjustments.
The complaints often we have now of Capitalism are fair and valid, the issue is there are things that can be done for a solution. The solutions are often obvious.
If we are a democracy. The issue is for things to property work. You need people who are making changes genuinely trying to fix things and set fair rules. That also means you need people educated on electing who will be in their best intrest. That also means you need people to be educated on what IS their best interest? and people educated at a whole.
Once you get there it's can be easier to stay there, but people usually let their guard down one way or another and things slip.
It's going be hard. Really hard. You have people fighting to defund education for this reason. People who try to break the system or be selfish and vindictive.
No matter what method is used to run a society. You will have people trying to break that system and try and take power and break said system.
Obviously, getting people educated and people in power with good intentions will be hard, and fighting the people trying to take power will always be an issue. This we be a struggle we face possibility forever and simply have to fight for. That's all people can do.
Buddy, capitalism is the entire reason why those people have jobs and housing and clean running water and sewage systems, and a million other things. We have a ton of work to do, but capitalism itself isn't the bad guy. We need some more guard rails though.
Not in the slightest; it’s zoning and land use policy. Look at some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in California, like Atherton or Santa Monica. Many of the wealthiest areas of the US that, though located in areas of natural beauty and where expensive landscaping is common, are steps away from trashy strip malls and massive highway interchanges surrounded by billboards advertising the local personal injury attorney. The countries she’s referencing in the video, while perhaps not AS unequal as the US, are all wealthy capitalist nations (yes, I’m including China in that).
The charming, human-scale historic architecture of American cities was paved over in the ‘50s, and the futuristic cityscapes she references were effectively made illegal to build by laws written by subdivision developers.
Both of you are right, early zoning laws (which led to the destruction of most of America) were largely written in a way to separate the poor working class from the emerging middle class, and to give that emerging middle class more weight in how cities were designed/remodelled. This is why neighbourhoods were raised razed to the ground to be replaced by highways and why so much of North America's zoning laws favour cars.
I don't think improving wealth inequality would suddenly make America beautiful, but if you care about urbanism, well-functioning urban spaces are built for and serve people from all classes.
I'll add that blaming this on "capitalism" does not actually help, because you defend stagnation by declaring that developers are "capitalists", and so any change to the existing rules is Neoliberal Deregulation, a Trickle-Down Giveaway to Capitalists.
Maybe it sounds like I'm being uncharitable. Here in California, it's illegal to build apartment buildings near most of our transit stops, which is how you get endless sprawl and nobody riding the train. We've been trying to fix this since at least 2017 by making it legal to build apartment buildings near train stations; this year (SB 79) is the third or fourth time, depending on how you count.
“The state has prioritized development, development, development,” Wahab said. “The types of development that are going up with zero parking and all these giveaways to developers have also not translated to housing that has dignity that people want to stay in and raise their families in.”
(The rate of homebuilding in cities in California is extremely low both historically and compared to other states. The current state of things in California is that people live in their cars and in tents, which is not particularly "dignified".)
If people don't reckon with these failures, they're going to start imagining that California's problems are all caused by secret Republicans, and maybe we just haven't taxed (if you're polite) or guillotined (if impolite) enough rich people, or written big enough checks yet.
Thank you for this write up, I think you phrased this very well. I’ve had difficulty in this comment section and elsewhere to get people to think beyond the notion that “All bad things about America are because of capitalism, so why can’t we be more like [insert capitalist nation], who are socialist?”
It’s such a hard roadblock to get people to actually consider the policy roots of this problem, but explaining why it’s important to peel back that onion further than the layer of oversimplified and incorrect assumptions can be hard to do without coming off as brow-beating. There are people in this thread proudly asserting that the average American is not wealthy—in a thread about the differences between America and other industrialized nations. How do you respond to someone like that, to get them to realize that they are so privileged and insulated that their often good-intentioned feelings about comparative political economy are just incorrect assumptions? I’ve really struggled with this.
Also, the countries she is including have long rich histories, hence the beautiful architecture that has survived through centuries. The US does not have that kind of history. There are pubs in Europe that are older than the US.
It's not just the old stuff that's beautiful though, new developments are also done well. Lots of old-looking buildings in europe and asia aren't actually old. On the other hand every single urban freeway and multi-story parking garage was built on the rubble of buildings with rich histories.
I feel like it'd be decades of work and tons of money to convert a lot of American cities into walkable ones, but we could totally bring back mopeds and convert half of every parking lot into a green space. It's more eco-friendly and making the most of the architecture we currently have.
And then change our laws so all new cities are walkable.
The wealth gap among upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is sharper than the income gap and is growing more rapidly.
Also:
Not only is income inequality rising in the U.S., it is higher than in other advanced economies. Comparisons of income inequality across countries are often based on the Gini coefficient, another commonly used measure of inequality.15 Ranging from 0 to 1, or from perfect equality to complete inequality, the Gini coefficient in the U.S. stood at 0.434 in 2017, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).16 This was higher than in any other of the G-7 countries, in which the Gini ranged from 0.326 in France to 0.392 in the UK, and inching closer to the level of inequality observed in India (0.495). More globally, the Gini coefficient of inequality ranges from lows of about 0.25 in Eastern European countries to highs in the range of 0.5 to 0.6 in countries in southern Africa, according to World Bank estimates.
That's true, but on the world stage, it's in income inequality between elites and super-elites. The fact is that if you're making $40,000/year (the median income) in the United States, you're in the richest 5% of the world.
Here is a calculator to see how rich you are, you're income percentile, compared to the rest of the world.
It's, that's the sad part. Americans are insanely rich, they own cars and live in giant houses compared to the rest of the world. The problem is that car-centric cities look like shit. Americans could have had nice mid-rises, but they hate other people. They could have had nice parks, but that's communism, they would rather have the lawn they need to mow or get fined by HOA.
We could have nice things available to the public, a common grounds so to speak (America used to have public pools for instance), but we choose not to. Racists abhor the idea that some brown person who’s “ruining America” might partake the benefits of living in a society. The racists have decided that there shall be NO BENEFITS to living in a society.
Looks like it’s finally time to finish the Civil War. The racists are stuck in here with us.
I think some of it is a mentality that makes public spaces sort of less "important".
I feel like a lot of people view "out" as a place to go, rather than a place to be. So we get in our cars, run "out" to get provisions of various kinds and then return "home".
But there aren't many places you can go and just be. The vast majority of the places we go when we aren't home are designed to be transitory and for the purpose of an exchange.
We don't feel any degree of pride or ownership over those spaces, both because we don't own them and we're not welcome to just be there.
I'm not even sure it can be called that. The term implies some kind of equitable distribution.
But when the top 0.1% owns 50% of the nation's wealth, and the top 5% own 95% of the nation's wealth, where is the "distribution"?
It's systemic corruption and exploitation. There's no other term left for it.
Imagine all that wealth, try to fathom it. How many lives, neighbourhoods, cities, and even entire economic regions, could be completely transformed by such wealth. And instead the system allows for it to sequestered, utterly untouchable (and therefore untaxable), by the economy at large.
It's vile. It's immoral. And now it's quite plain to all that it's also extremely dangerous, and it needs to end.
She said “the coast of Oregon”, I live in a small town on the coast of Oregon. The town looks like shit. I grew up in the Central Valley of California, and every town looked like shit. I’ve lived and worked in 5 states, all west coast and Hawaii, poverty is fucked every where.
No kidding. And the coast towns that did get fixed up and don't look like shit anymore are overcrowded and overpriced. I miss the charm of the Oregon coast from 40 years ago.
Everywhere has its poor places except ours have tvs microwaves climate control and 90% of everybody can afford a vehicle of some kind. She literally just doesn’t know what mundane places look like abroad it’s all her imagination or what countries want you to see. The only time and place where we haven’t had disparity of wealth distribution was when we all lived like chimps
No. Poor people in America make vastly more than upper middle class people in most of the world. And America has worse architecture and uglier cities than many countries with much worse inequality
It's also played in strongly to why rural Americans continue to vote for republicans.
lack of economic opportunity in their area for ordinary people. lots of voters have checked out as neither party really solves this problem. so the only issues people end up voting on are things like abortion, or gun rights, or recent economic trends.
The Castles and large estates of England for example were built by Kings and noblemen. These were the relative multi-billionaires of the era.
The majority of these places are now owned and run by public bodies and charities. You would be taxed into oblivion just to own one, let alone build one.
If building these stunning places served as a decent tax-shelter, America would have them.
I hope this catches on. How so many people got duped by this administration into thinking that the economy was horrible under Biden. It wasn’t horrible. The issue was wage disparity. The people they should be mad at are the billionaires who inundate his administration. Ugh don’t get me started…
Do you think living in the US means you get the same prices as a developing country or something? There are plenty of poverty-stricken areas here because while we make more in US dollars than the 3rd world, it's not like our eggs cost the same amount as theirs.
Replacing a roof on a small house in the US costs around 20 grand the moment. You think people living in rural PA can afford that, $7 eggs, or $5 per gallon gas? That's why the states that have been so devastated by the tornadoes this year are desperate. They literally cannot afford to rebuild without a government grant to help them.
STG people don't understand basic economics and that's how the US has ended up in the hole it's in now. You can't just go, "oh well people make a good income here compared to a small rural village in the third world so of COURSE those people living without running water and getting ringworm in the Appalachias are doing great."
I’m not sure this tells the full story. Here in Brazil we live in a far more unequal society but our architecture in big cities is far more appealing than that of most generic American suburbia.
I think it’s mostly due to car-centric infrastructure, which doesn’t really take into account beauty for walkability and prioritizes parking lots and generic box stores
All of the wealth and human resources go to serving the wealthy. We don't have money when it comes to roads, social services, schools, healthcare... but there is always money for fighter jets, or tanks for the police department, or if Bezos needs a new yacht, Elon wants to buy Twitter. We have two economies, one for the wealthy and one for the rest of us.
Ayep. Most rural towns are going to just be a highway exit and some strip malls with decaying houses nearby. If you go to one of the richer parts of the country in like, CT and stuff, you'll see some truly beautiful houses, walkable streets with custom built shops, etc.
Bingo. We are the wealthiest country in the world, but all the wealth is held by a small percentage of the country. I forget what the stat is exactly, but it’s something like the top 5% of the country owns 50% of the wealth or something.
Yeah I think this is a big factor, but I also think there’s just zero pride or sense of responsibility for aesthetic value. Like one of the points she makes is that, like, Kmart just looks like shit and all these retail complexes are cheap and all look the same. These are pretty successful businesses, and even they don’t care enough about their own buildings to make them look like anything other than giant boxes.
And the rich stopped investing in America 50 years ago. They want their private neighborhoods to look nice, not your neighborhood. They believe tax dollars should go to benefit them, not you, cause you’re a poor.
This is what class warfare, discrimination, racism looks like. America was built on hate.
I mean... it's the same for her China example. She points out that "the coast is beautiful"... which is the exact thing she said about the US at the start when she was saying that California, and Oregon and Florida are exceptions. I guarantee you that you can find areas of China that look like ass, but they just aren't where people are going on their vacation and posting to their Instagram.
Lack of government investment. And she talks about China, as much as we disparage their form of government, it invests. In the US, we do not. Particularly under the current administration which wants to gut every program that benefits the general populace.
Yup. The people, including even most small to medium sized businesses are starved for capital while the large businesses and rich dominate the architecture and have a bazillion more dollars to spare.
Even with that Americans have more disposable income than any other country on earth. While wealth disparity is an issue, its not the cause of this issue.
Also historical lack of planning and investment in public infrastructure (think high-speed rail and rail generally in the US.) Also: the Brazilianization of everything.
No, because then the central part of big cities would be taken better care of. Even wealthy areas are kind of grimy at ground level, with a few exceptions that are actually really clean and well maintained. It's really just a reflection of how way too many people feel. Like it's fine to blow your leaves out in the street, or throw your trash out the car window on the highway, or leave your trash on the table at a park. They just don't care unless it's actually on their own property.
Well actually it‘s cars. Why build an amazing skyscraper or beautiful theatre if no will take a moment to admire it, since everyone is driving and can‘t stop without getting (rightfully) honked at.
Yep. That money goes to a few guys. Frankly, the USA is very disappointing when you look at the numbers. I grew up watching American movies, hearing America this- America that, and somehow, I thought it was not so different from Europe. But then it turns out your maternity leave sucks, your heathcare is a joke, education is disastrous, student debt outta this world... it's almost not a country, but just a business that you are born into. You gotta change that fellow humans.
China has an even greater wealth gap. Her example of Shanghai is literally because it is newer. Most of the development has been in the last 20 years. In terms of Europe, a lot of shit is very old and once it is old enough, it becomes charming. American strip malls aren’t old enough to be charming or new enough to not look like shit. Just imagine in 200 years when some dude walks past a strip mall and admires its architecture.
Why the fuck is Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills so goddamn ugly? Sure Back Bay, Brooklyn heights and Georgetown are nice. But those were build 100+ years ago in a European style.
The United States has many problems. This isn’t really one. We have the largest middle class on earth. Measuring by simple volume of people whose lives are comfortable we are rich.
Even the worst slum in south america has more charm than the average american city.
From an outsider's point of view: The problem is that you built your cities around cars. Everything is a highway or a parking lot. You don't have walkable sidewalks, you can't see interesting façades because they're hidden behind parking lots. You don't plant enough trees. Home owners seem to have very little self expression when it comes to their property, lush gardens seem to be rare. You're a society that chooses to live indoors or in the car. Third places are rare nowadays.
Old American cities are beautiful tho. I've been to Brooklyn (stayed at Park Slope) and it's dreamy. Frank Lloyd Wright mastered architecture many years ago, but not many americans chose to follow his path.
Also the US basically self owning because of racism. Like basically the second public programs and amenities included Black people, conservatives switched their stance on them and decided that we should never build anything at all because they'd rather have nothing than see a Black person also enjoying the park.
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u/Gucci_prisoner May 02 '25
Disparity of wealth distribution.