So, here we have the planet Earth.  Currently there are about six billion people on the planet, and about twenty percent of the people have about ninety percent of the wealth.  (Not sure about the exact numbers, but it is something like that).   The global population is highly lopsided in terms of wealth.  Now, anyone stepping back and looking at this objectively would initially think that this is a bad thing.  Until they realised that they are part of the twenty percent and that to even things up would require drastic changes on their part.  I can see three possible 'forks in the road' for our future.

1.  Nothing changes.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.   Eventually the greedy rich people eat up all of the resources and we all die.

2.  Somehow we decide to level the playing field.  We try to divide all the resources of the planet up to each person equally.  This would require myself and most people I know to have a much lower standard of living.

3.  We bring the worlds population up to our level of wealth.   Unfortunately, with the current population, it would require the resources of numerous Earths to do that, so a whole lot of people are going to have to die off before the entire world's population can be brought up to western standards of living.

One of the problems is that we have it ingrained in our psyche that we must grow or die.  The first time a government official says that the economy isn't growing anymore, or heaven forbid, shrinking, the entire economic community panics.  But since all the economy is derived from a closed system - namely the Earth, it doesn't make sense that it will grow forever.  We don't have the resources for that.

For the three options above, I doubt #2 will ever happen.  With advanced technology we might be able to work on #3 with today's population, but I doubt it.   And that would require the population to stop growing now.  When I was born, there were about three billion people on the planet.  Now that has doubled.  I think of myself as a relatively young person, so it's weird to think that the majority of the world's population is younger than I am.  As a global population, we need to stop breeding.  Or at least slow it down somewhat.

So it looks like, that unless something changes, option #1 is what is happening.   I could see it somewhat working as long as the rich people get to a level of consumption they are comfortable with, and that is sustainable.  Once we get to the maximum sustainable level, we must stop growing.  Uncontrolled growth is going to kill us.  Just like a cancer in the human body.

I'm going to steal a comic posted on a friend's web site, just cause I like it so much.  Though I would never willingly choose that lifestyle, I must agree that ignorance is bliss.