Teribus - I was referring to England's feudal past, when the peasants were compelled by blunt force to give part of their meager scrapings to their overlords. This continued in different ways through the industrial revolution and into the 20th century.

You and I were lucky to have been born in what is now showing itself to have been a brief period of relative wealth for those not part of the upper class, in Western Europe and North America. After the Great Depression and World War II, economic prosperity in those countries seemed to make possible a larger middle class and a semblance of equality and social justice.

That window is closing, and it's being closed because today's ruling class has decided it's in its better interest to go back to a "feudal" model of society. You seem to be in the "I got mine" camp, and good for you - I never even had the chance to acquire property, and neither have the majority of working people, to say nothing of the rest of the world. Poverty is making a comeback, and it's by design.