It’s increasingly looking like Margaret Atwood in her MaddAddam trilogy got it right about how future American and world civilization will structure itself: very rich oligarchs living lives of exorbitant luxury, a very tiny “middle class” who are basically their servants, and the impoverished rabble who are seen as utterly savage, base and expendable.

Everything points this way; nothing indicates another outcome is likely. In addition, something similar to that is how most human societies have been structured throughout post-hunter-gatherer history.

Just on the basis of the tendency of regression to mean, this is a likely outcome. The reality and already underestimated effects of climate change only make this far more likely, not less.