A main catalyst for this phenomena is the impact of technology advances on the supply/demand curve for human labour.

As machine labour, automation, AI, IOT etc. represent viable, less expensive, more reliable alternatives to humans in a given industry or jobtype, it washes those jobs away like a tsunami, leaving vast human destruction in its wake. The only beneficiaries are the owners of the enabling capital.

History will reveal this to be the true root cause of our accelerating economic inequality. Unfortunately, all the intellectuals and politicians have to offer us thus far is to double-down on some variation of what's in last century's free-market or socialist toolboxes. It's a waste of time and energy, exacerbates the political divide and makes consideration of real solutions impossible.

As Walt Kelly's character Pogo famously quipped, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

This dynamic will not stop until we all realize that systems that has worked reasonably well for centuries cannot help but become irrelevant when a critical element has been eliminated from the formula. All one has to do is pick up any Intro to Economics textbook, find the section that discussess the supply/demand curve for labour then conside what happens if the labour supply is all machines. What is the downstream impact on humanity?

To summarize, the need for human labor as a component of the production of goods and services is declining at a close to exponential rate. Economic systems and policies that continue to rely on the employment and compensation of human labour as a fundamental driver of social and economic equilibrium are not only irrelevant, they are contributing to the destruction of socio-economic stability.

It's time for a new paradigm.