Forgive the "dumb question", but it seems like a big fat fucking contradiction to me that the capitalist class - especially the wealthiest layer, i.e the "super-rich" as exemplified by those Forbes lists - have increased their wealth to unprecedented levels (both absolutely and relative to "everyone else") yet during the same period, the capitalist SYSTEM has become more unstable, more prone to crisis, etc. How do we explain this?

From an American standpoint (always a dangerous place to be...) comparisons to the "Gilded Age" of the "Robber Barons" seem tempting, but note that conditions were quite different back then ("globalization" not being remotely close in development and significance as it is today, the emergence and strength of organized labor - along with labor radicalism and the direct and often-violent confrontations between labor and capital - plus the US not being the global "superpower" that it is today - or even globally dominant at all, certainly not like in the 20th century, as well as the more obvious facts such as science and technology being less advanced than nowadays, a less urbanized population, the fault lines of race, ethnicity, immigration, religion, and region being qualitatively different back then...). I don't see THAT much similarity.

Perhaps this is the "new normal" for capitalism in this era of neoliberal hegemony. Or, as the saying goes, "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" Someone better inform the Three Stooges (Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz)...

Forgive the "dumb question", but it seems like a big fat fucking contradiction to me that the capitalist class - especially the wealthiest layer, i.e the "super-rich" as exemplified by those Forbes lists - have increased their wealth to unprecedented levels (both absolutely and relative to "everyone else") yet during the same period, the capitalist SYSTEM has become more unstable, more prone to crisis, etc. How do we explain this?

From an American standpoint (always a dangerous place to be...) comparisons to the "Gilded Age" of the "Robber Barons" seem tempting, but note that conditions were quite different back then ("globalization" not being remotely close in development and significance as it is today, the emergence and strength of organized labor - along with labor radicalism and the direct and often-violent confrontations between labor and capital - plus the US not being the global "superpower" that it is today - or even globally dominant at all, certainly not like in the 20th century, as well as the more obvious facts such as science and technology being less advanced than nowadays, a less urbanized population, the fault lines of race, ethnicity, immigration, religion, and region being qualitatively different back then...). I don't see THAT much similarity.

Perhaps this is the "new normal" for capitalism in this era of neoliberal hegemony. Or, as the saying goes, "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" Someone better inform the Three Stooges (Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz)...

Just because the system is increasingly unstable doesn't mean that individuals or sections of the ruling class can't be thriving at the same time. Capitalism is dynamic, and some will always find a way to turn a profit. For example, you can start 'mining' services previously in the public sector, like education. Or ya might bottles water.... Indeed, some of this 'thriving' comes at the expense of the overall health of the system. The 'gaming' of the system on Wall St certainly ain't good for the system but few of those assholes gonna pass up that boodle.

In any case the upshot is the ever increasing tendency toward monopoly, predicted, and in itself a great weakening of capitalism as disparities become grotesque, and unavoidable to even the most myopic.