Wealth Accumulation

Society is geared for wealth to accumulate.
It's almost like wealth has a certain gravity about it that pulls other wealth to it such that the lumped wealth gathers yet more wealth. The bigger the wealth gets the more quickly it gathers more wealth.

This appears to be how society has ALWAYS worked. The cycle of wealth has been repeated over and over again.

It is thus: everyone starts out equal until someone works smarter AND harder than everyone else and gets more for their efforts. That individual eventually accumulates wealth at a rate faster than they consume it. They pass the leftover wealth on to their children when they die. Those children use that wealth to leverage their work to gain more wealth at a faster pace. Eventually the most wealthy 1% have more than 99% of all the wealth in the world. Then something disrupts this and the wealth situation resets to a much more equal state only to start over again.

Here's the kicker on this: we, the poor, not only LET it happen but also HELP make it happen.

We do this in many ways that are forced upon us such as by buying food from a company with the lowest prices and clothing from larger companies whose profits line the pockets of their CEOs.
We do this in ways that are convenient to us such by buying internet service from large corporations whose profits line the pockets of their CEOs.
We do this without knowing we're doing it by having a political system where politicians can become rich through listening to lobbyists for special interest groups.
We also do this willingly through many of the luxuries that we partake in. I am a Star Trek fan. Every time I purchase anything with a Star Trek label on it I am contributing to the wealthy people behind Paramount (and it's parent company) having greater wealth while decreasing my own wealth. Any time someone purchases a ticket to a professional sporting event they, too, are doing this.

This is something to think on. The next time you purchase anything you are contributing to the inherently unbalanced system that aggregates all the wealth at the top until the top is too wealth heavy to stay where it is.

When will the next collapse be?

They do happen: that's how we ended up with the USSR. That's the root cause of the French Revolution and the seed of WWI (WWII was, really, just a continuation of WWI after recovery from the economic sanctions imposed on Germany at the end of WWI).