Are the Elites to Blame For All Society’s Problems?

The concentration of wealth at the beginning of the twenty-first century is strangely reminiscent of the interwar period: the top 1% captures nearly 20% of income in the United States and 12% in Europe, while it holds about one-third of total wealth in these same countries. The work of Thomas Piketty highlights the concentration of economic and political power within the same elites. If in the 1930s, it was the lack of regulation of financial markets, a social safety net, and counter-cyclical policies that were at fault, today new failures have emerged: climate change, questioning the rule of law, the rise of military conflicts, so many evils that elites struggle to curb.

The social contract that accompanied the Industrial Revolution is based on foundational myths: international trade would guarantee peace, economic progress would ensure everyone’s enrichment, and inequality would be only temporary. It is this partly unfulfilled promise that the elites must answer for. Is it a failure of individual governance by certain heads of state, a structural fragility of democratic institutions in the face of crises, or a modification of the social contract?