This is an example of correlation != causation. The French Revolution, commonly cited as an example of this, was not caused by wealth inequality. It was caused by the fact that the French were practically, in some cases literally, starving while the government flailed about ineffectively, accrued tremendous debt seemingly to no end largely driven by fruitless wars, and ultimately turned to taxation to try to sustain a failing state. It was not an otherwise comfortable people suddenly deciding to lop off people's heads because wealth inequality rose beyond some acceptable level.
I doubt we'll ever see another effective organic revolution in any developed nation because people in general no longer have the chutzpah for the actions required to change a government that doesn't want to change, and because we've all become contented from that pale white glow in front of our faces for ever longer fractions of every single waking moment. There's also the effective division of society. Two sides increasingly hate each other which means if either side ever crossed that invisible line, the other side would suddenly become hugely pro-government.
There are also some economic changes that mean France's situation would never be replicated in a place such as the US. In particular money no longer has any real meaning. It's not backed by anything and governments can 'print it' (not how most money is made, but that's another topic) to no end. The only real constraining factor is perception. So long as your people and other nations agree to believe your money has value, then it does. This is how we can spend trillions of dollars we don't have on wars, be $22 trillion in debt that nobody expects will ever be paid off, inject huge sums of money in the market to artificially inflate it and call that 'growth', yet still have an ultra-premium rated currency.
This is also why 'helicopter money' [1] is thought to be a good idea * . You print money, load it up on a helicopter, and then drop it down to the people. The asterisk there is because it's a good idea only if people don't expect it to be repeated. It all goes back to perception. Keep dropping the helicopter money and people stop believing in the value of the dollar and so it indeed loses all value. This is, as an aside, a major issues with things such as a basic income. We could easily 'afford' it. But you very much are risking a perceptive change on the value of the dollar with such systems in which case all that money you're tossing around becomes worth about as much as the beads at Mardi Gras. And tossing even more only trends towards hyperinflation.
The point of that aside on money being that France lived in a time where there was a fixed amount of money and their government was wasting that money. Today our governments waste money like never before but it has less effect on the common people since governments don't need the amount spent to be less than the amount 'earned.'
I doubt we'll ever see another effective organic revolution in any developed nation because people in general no longer have the chutzpah for the actions required to change a government that doesn't want to change, and because we've all become contented from that pale white glow in front of our faces for ever longer fractions of every single waking moment. There's also the effective division of society. Two sides increasingly hate each other which means if either side ever crossed that invisible line, the other side would suddenly become hugely pro-government.
There are also some economic changes that mean France's situation would never be replicated in a place such as the US. In particular money no longer has any real meaning. It's not backed by anything and governments can 'print it' (not how most money is made, but that's another topic) to no end. The only real constraining factor is perception. So long as your people and other nations agree to believe your money has value, then it does. This is how we can spend trillions of dollars we don't have on wars, be $22 trillion in debt that nobody expects will ever be paid off, inject huge sums of money in the market to artificially inflate it and call that 'growth', yet still have an ultra-premium rated currency.
This is also why 'helicopter money' [1] is thought to be a good idea * . You print money, load it up on a helicopter, and then drop it down to the people. The asterisk there is because it's a good idea only if people don't expect it to be repeated. It all goes back to perception. Keep dropping the helicopter money and people stop believing in the value of the dollar and so it indeed loses all value. This is, as an aside, a major issues with things such as a basic income. We could easily 'afford' it. But you very much are risking a perceptive change on the value of the dollar with such systems in which case all that money you're tossing around becomes worth about as much as the beads at Mardi Gras. And tossing even more only trends towards hyperinflation.
The point of that aside on money being that France lived in a time where there was a fixed amount of money and their government was wasting that money. Today our governments waste money like never before but it has less effect on the common people since governments don't need the amount spent to be less than the amount 'earned.'
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_money