There has always been a struggle by the people against the gratuitous accumulation of wealth and power.  So the inequality we live with today is a problem that humanity has been grappling with since is inception.  Tariq Ali explains how in this passage:

 

[…]

In Sparta in the third century BCE, a fissure developed between the ruling elite and ordinary people following the Peloponnesian Wars, and those who were ruled demanded change because the gap between rich and poor had become so huge it couldn’t be tolerated. A succession of radical monarchs, Agis IV, Cleomenes III and Nabis, created a structure to help revive the state. Nobles were sent into exile; the magistrates’ dictatorship was abolished; slaves were given their freedom; all citizens were allowed to vote; and land confiscated from the rich was distributed to the poor (something the ECB wouldn’t tolerate today). The early Roman Republic, threatened by this example, sent its legions under Titus Quinctius Flamininus to crush Sparta. According to Livy, this was the response from Nabis, the king of Sparta, and when you read these words you feel the cold anger and the dignity:

     “Do not demand that Sparta conform to your own laws and institutions … You select your cavalry and infantry by their property qualifications and desire that a few should excel in wealth and the common people be subject to them. Our law-giver did not want the state to be in the hands of a few, whom you call the Senate, nor that any one class should have supremacy in the state. He believed that by equality of fortune and dignity there would be many to bear arms for their country.”

Now if I can just find the the right people to negotiate with  in front of mysteriously bottomless pits, with a THIS…IS…CANADA snarly overture primed, I too believe we can punt our way to a better country. :)

I can see it now, a special guest Gerard Butler meets Steven Harper…

[Source: Counterpunch]