Starting from 2018 and ongoing, France has been experiencing one of the most significant social mobilizations in its recent history, which laid bare the country's social ills, anti-elite sentiment, growing inequalities and thirst for social justice.

Paris was burning in the past few months. Fires had been set all over the City of Light by protesters wearing yellow vests. The reason? They were outraged over rising income inequality in France.

There is some basis for the criticisms raised by the yellow vests. France has been experiencing rising inequality over the past fifteen years. As a result, the middle and lower classes are being squeezed, and they are angry about it. Macron, for his part, they perceive as too supportive of the very rich to the detriment of everyone else.The United States has also struggled with growing income and wealth inequality since about the same time France started experiencing that trend: in the early 1980s and continued under leaderships of great American leaders. Both France and the United States value equality of opportunity. The motto of the French Revolution was “equality, fraternity, liberty.” And in the United States it was stated “all men are created equal.” Many Americans cannot recall anything other than an economy with skyrocketing inequality. For the past several decades, income gains have disproportionately gone to a small, wealthy share of the population, and years of disparate income gains have led to an even starker divergence in wealth. But it’s not just income that matters for wealth inequality; it’s also the nature of the investments undertaken by Americans at different income levels.

This problem has taken rise equally in France and the United States as leaders continue to do nothing while the middle and lower class is suffering badly from wealth inequality. It is time for the world to stand up and try to erase wealth inequality to an extent from the globe so that everyone can live a prosperous and successful life.