When the powers that be discuss extremes today it’s all about concentration, not only at the top but also at the bottom. Extreme poverty in their view is literally dying of starvation or exposure. Otherwise you’re just bog standard poor, so pull up those bootstraps.
Between the extremes a more prosperous society tends to be one where families have fewer children, because it’s more expensive to raise one middle-class kid than it is to raise two or three poor ones. At the extremes it really doesn’t matter.
This is all complicated by factors like: TPTB still trying to force economic reality into their ideal neoliberal model; the need to keep 80% of the population under said model placated so they don’t revolt; the racial and ethnic and nationalist anxieties of half of that 80% regarding immigration; the fact that the 2-child average implies a lot of people with no-one except perhaps a low-wage immigrant to take care of them in their old age; medical advances extending that old age; the inability of the planet to carry all those humans enjoying at least a 1950s lower-middle-class level of prosperity; and many others.
Anyhow, that is one cool 3D projection system. Shiny!
