I talked about Peter Turchin’s idea of “elite overproduction” leading to social and economic crisis.

The income and wealth inequality that now plague us are, to a great degree, the result of persistently and artificially low interest rates. This goes back long before the Great Financial Crisis. 

Here’s the Federal Funds Rate, which the Fed directly controls, since 1955. You can see rates have been generally falling since the early 1980s. 

I think it is not coincidence this is the same period in which wage growth lagged productivity growth, and the gap widened between the wealthiest Americans and the middle class.

Rome was not so much conquered by “barbarians” as it committed societal suicide, when the glue that held it together, the cooperation of all factions, simply disappeared.

Gary North, (one of my first true historical mentors), in a long and technical 2011 essay, talked about the famous historian Robert Nisbet.

John Mauldin 4 December 2020

https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/elites-on-the-edge

The fundamental problems are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. 

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2020/11/you-have-situation-now-where-there-are.html