Adam Curtis, writing for his blog The Medium and the Message at the BBC:
Of course our time is completely different from the age of the muckrakers. There isn’t the terrible poverty - nor the violent strikes where workers were gunned down by private armies.
But in other ways there are similarities. New technologies and giant financial systems are transforming society. They bring with them great benefits and exciting new ways of living - but at the same time there have been massive increases in inequality.
In Britain - the top 1 percent of people now pay 30 percent of all income tax. Thirty years ago the top 1 percent paid only 11 percent - and that was at a time when the taxes on the rich were much higher. At the same time the average wage has been static for ten years. All new increases in wealth, from productivity, go only to the rich.
The politicians seem to be helpless. The economic crisis of 2008 has revealed scandal after scandal in the financial system but there has been no real reform. When HSBC was revealed to have been laundering money for Mexican drug cartels no-one was prosecuted because doing so “might create instabilities in the system”.
Wow.