We used to think that we could solve inequality. In a democratic society, as income gaps widened and the rich got richer, an average Joe (or a median voter) would demand redistribution and vote for a government that pledged to do so. This theory — known as the Meltzer-Richard model — was a straightforward but widely accepted story. It made “rational” sense. Earlier propositions mooted that some growth in inequality was even necessary for economic development, but market forces would eventually reduce inequality to a sustainable or palatable level.

Unfortunately, the experience of recent decades has widely disproved these theories. Today, in the UK, the richest 1 percent of households hold more wealth than entire bottom 70 percent, and FTSE CEOs take home 109 times the salary of an average worker. In the last three years alone, the wealthiest two hundred families in Britain increased their wealth by £175 billion — just half of this increase would have financed a real-terms pay rise for all 5.5 million public sector workers. By some estimates, inequality will now reach a record high over the coming years. A similar story is playing out across the globe, as extreme poverty and extreme wealth increase simultaneously for the first time in twenty-five years.

Yet despite living in this era of crisis, there is no transformative political project on the horizon in the UK. The associated psychic toll of economic and political instability is now so crushing that even the top 10 percent of earners are worried, or at least that is the message of Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell’s new book, Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality. As members of this group become subject to increasing uncertainty themselves, can they become allies in the fight against inequality?