Wealth is so out of control these days. The uber wealthy have grown to a point where they have become oligarchs (actual definition: An oligarch is an extremely rich and powerful person who uses extreme wealth and business ties to control or influence government and society. The word comes from ancient Greek terms meaning "to rule by the few")
Back in 1990, there were just 66 people in the US who had a billion dollars or more. And the top 1% of the population controlled a little under $5 trillion in total.
Today, there are about 3,400 people with a billion or more (that's more than a 50 fold increase, and the curve is something like exponential growth). And the amount of wealth controlled by the top 1% is around $56 trillion (an 11 fold increase!).
But the number of people in the top 1% only increased by about 20% (1.08 million people > 1.33 million people). Essentially meaning the group at the very top accumulated most of the wealth.
And the crazy part is that this increase is almost exclusively "new money," accumulated in an environment where de-regulation is key. Tax rules are favorable, companies can do what they want, and the people that run companies are profiting off the backs of their under-appreciated employees.
It's crazy, and can lead to nowhere good in the long run. We can and should be taxing them more. I have no issues with someone accumulating wealth, but at what point is it "too much" or excessive? Seems to me that there should be a threshold (IMHO $50 million is more than enough for anyone and is generational in nature), and in excess of that, you have to contribute to society in some way - through taxation or by having to move it into a charitable endeavor.
On that note, I recently re-watched the re-imagined adaptation of Sherlock Holmes called "Elementary" which came out about 15 years ago. Holmes is still British, but he's solving crimes in New York with the help of Watson, played by Lucy Liu. It is entertaining, but takes a few modern-day liberties.
One of those liberties is to have storylines around Holmes' father, Morland. He comes from old money, and has a lot of power in the world to do as he pleases. At some point in the story arc, new money comes into the picture and starts aggressively moving into Morland's domain. He can stave it off at first, and then must start calling on other old money players to band together. Only, he gets betrayed as a group of them, who sell out to these new players - and they set him up to be killed off.
What we're seeing play out around us is that storyline to a point. The new money players are edging out the old money - and it becomes a matter of them adapting, or they fall behind. Life is imitating art to a degree.