As the world's elite gathered in Switzerland this week to talk about economic matters, the charity Oxfam released a report highlighting how the rich are getting richer while the poor continue to have less.
According to that report, the richest 80 people in the world now have the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people.
And that gap is widening, rather than narrowing.
By next year, it is estimated the richest one per cent will own more than the poorest 99 per cent combined.
Just pause for a second and think about that statistic. It is simply mind-boggling.
And despite how the media presents rich philanthropists such as Bill Gates - his giving is just a drop in the bucket globally.
This bodes ill, and not just in a moral sense, the charity warned.
It also threatens functional political systems and economic growth around the world.
While the disparities in the report are more glaringly apparent in developing areas of the globe, North America shows ample evidence of the trend.
Extreme wealth is a force that attracts more money to itself by its sheer gravitational pull, aided by a combination of crony capitalism, social Darwinism and trickle-down economic theory. Not to mention naked self-interest.
Gradually, however, those at the top of the food chain are waking up to the fact that a consumer society in which large numbers of people are not benefiting, buying or buying in is inherently unstable.
Startling acts of altruism and philanthropy aside, governments remain the primary means of income redistribution in most societies.
Clearly they must do a better job.
Otherwise, as the toe of the mountain is worn away, those at the top will also have a long, long way to tumble.
