When Charles Dickens wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” to begin “A Tale of Two Cities,” he compared the years of the French Revolution to his own “present period.” Both were wracked with inequality. But he couldn’t have known that 75 years later inequality would cause the Great Depression. Or that 75 years after that, in our own present period, extreme inequality would return for a fourth time, to impact a much greater number of people. He probably didn’t know that the cycles of history seem to drag the developed world into desperate times about every 75 years, and then seek relief through war or revolution.

It’s that time again.

This observation is historically accurate although I think the attached blog post is a bit overdramatic. Policy makers in this age are fairly smart about avoiding these consequences by creating safety valves and ignoring the wining of libertarians. Something probably still needs to be done about housing.