Runaway income inequality has created a world where just eight men own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population.

Yes, you read that right. Just eight individuals have as much wealth as 3.6 billion people on this planet. That's billion with a "b."

This sobering reality is a result of a skewed global economic and political system that favors the few at the expense of everyone else.

Big business and the super-wealthy are fueling the inequality crisis by rigging the rules of our economy and our political system to enrich themselves. Big corporations want to maximize the returns to their wealthy shareholders at all costs. More and more profits are channeled to wealthy shareholders rather than being reinvested in the business, while worker's wages and prices paid to producers are constantly being squeezed.

To make things worse, tax dodging has become a standard business practice and corporations are spending billions lobbying government to control the rules.

The super-rich are accumulating wealth at a phenomenal rate, they reward themselves with salaries far beyond what their talent, effort or skills justify, and use a network of tax havens to avoid paying their fair share.

Power and privilege is being used to rig the system to increase the gap between the richest and the rest to levels we have not seen before. Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.

Hardworking people at the bottom of the income curve don't make enough to put food on the table or buy medicine when their kids get sick, much less money to buy a home, start a business or save for the future. And so the engine of economic growth breaks down.

The 1 percent now controls more global wealth than the 99 percent of the rest of us combined, and it's only getting worse. Repeated warnings about the explosion of inequality have not worked to reverse its course.

Public anger due in part to this dramatic inequality is already creating political shockwaves, from the election of Donald Trump here in the US to Brexit in the UK. President-elect Trump tapped into this deep, angry sentiment during the campaign with strong rhetoric about the "rigged system" and restoring jobs and wages.

But despite a populist message of helping forgotten workers, little has emerged from President Donald Trump's transition team for constructive proposals to unrig the rules. In fact, what little detail is available of their proposals – tax cuts for the super-rich, eliminating the national health insurance program – indicates quite the opposite.

In Congress the proposals are even worse: eliminating wage protections, reducing social safety-net programs, privatizing health insurance for elderly.

Trump boasted about avoiding taxes and campaigned on a message of fighting "rigged rules" and inequality. But tax cuts for the rich, dismantling protections for workers and punishing refugees and immigrants and other vulnerable groups will only worsen inequality and the suffering of working people.

To lead the agencies that protect workers, the environment and human rights, Trump has nominated individuals who have spent their careers attacking the rules, undermining protections and resisting progress. It seems that he's called the foxes to guard the hen house.

This agenda, and these leaders, are not likely to spur equitable growth, but only further concentrate income and wealth in the superclass of the 1 percent.

The rigged rules of our economic and political system hold our economy back and make it tough for hardworking people to get ahead. Tens of millions of Americans work but still find themselves in poverty. The ability to work hard and rise up from humble beginnings – the American Dream – is becoming a myth from our past.

We can do better than this. Now is the time to unite behind a positive vision for change that gives everyone a chance to work and working people a chance to succeed. We need a government that is accountable to all of us, not just special interests and the wealthy. We need equality for women and minorities. We need jobs that pay a living wage and corporations that pay their taxes so our schools, hospitals and transportation systems can function.