Throughout America's small towns and suburbs, you can see the ominous markers of a coming sea change. Empty storefronts. Gutted strip malls. Vacant shopping complexes.

Indeed, nothing captures America's perverse economic picture better than the transformation happening in the retail sector. Brick-and-mortar retailers are hemorrhaging jobs: 90,000 since last October. That's 15,000 lost jobs per month.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, the founder of online retailer Amazon, has become the nation's second richest man—and a virtual lock to be No. 1 within a few years, if not months. Bezos's wealth has tripled in just over two years, a tidy $50 billion increase. That's over $1.5 billion per month.

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The connection between those two trends is indisputable. Every month, the same forces that destroy the jobs and turn upside down the lives of 15,000 Americans drive $1.5 billion into the pocket of the second-wealthiest American.

It's the real-life embodiment of a Tom Tomorrow cartoon I saw years ago: the One Rich Guy Who Owns Everything. "Over the years, income inequality continued to rise," the comic begins, "until finally, one rich guy owned as much as the rest of the planet combined."

The strip was meant to be an extrapolation of wealth inequality to its most absurdly concentrated point. It was satire. But the more absurd thing is that we're actually trending in that direction.

One Rich Guy

Consider the trend since the inaugural appearance of the Forbes 400 list 35 years ago. In 1982, the wealthiest 400 Americans had a combined net worth of slightly less than 1 percent of the nation’s aggregate wealth. Today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the 20 wealthiest Americans enjoy that same slice.

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Reflect on that. The size of the group of wealthy Americans accounting for 1 percent of the country's wealth has been trimmed by 95 percent in just 35 years, from 400 to 20. If that group were reduced by the same amount over the next 35 years, what would we have?

In three words: One Rich Guy.

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Mark Makela/Getty

Obviously, "One Rich Guy" is hyperbole. But the idea that one guy, or even 20 guys, could control a full 1 percent of the wealth in a country of over 300 million should alarm our leaders. Instead, they're concerned that the contenders to be the country's One Rich Guy are being taxed unfairly. ("Why do you want to punish his success?" asks a lawmaker in Tom Tomorrow's dystopian cartoon, in front of a dilapidated Capitol building.)

Could the trend of the past 35 years continue? Actually, it could accelerate.

Consider the transformation we're witnessing in the retail sector repeating itself when online retailers enter the grocery business, electronic tablets replace servers at restaurants, hamburger-making robots replace fast-food workers and driverless vehicles replace everyone who currently drives a vehicle for a living. Those transformations are all underway.

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