[ekianjo]

> If you look at the trends over time, in real terms, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer

No, this is totally false. You can say that the gap between very rich people and poor people has been expanding, but both groups have been getting richer, and as a whole the world is clearly getting out of poverty. The poors are getting less poor from generation to generation. And it's fundamentally "normal" that the rich get richer faster than the poor because if you have 10% of asset increase every year for both groups (just a random number) anyway the larger assets will grow faster (in relative terms) and the gap will increase. This being said, the poor do get richer over time, there's numerous presentations on that subject on TEDtalks from different researchers. Don't deny the facts.