Air travel got way cheaper and more popular over the last two or three decades. Some of this is deregulation and technological innovation enabling lower fuel costs. Much more of this is because customers almost always choose the lowest cost airfare over all other choices. This is a constant pressure to reduce cost and features of the flight and reflects what the average coach customer actually wants. It is nothing to be mad about. Airlines are a low-margin industry, which in my mind trends towards nonexploitative.<p>If you look at proportions of revenue and costs, the premium seats of an airplane subsidize the cheap seats. And they get to the destination maybe 5 minutes earlier if they disembark first.
This is unrestrained capitalism's natural progression. Just look at the Guilded Age. Capitalism increases the total size of the pie (GDP) but at the same time actively shifts its concentration more and more towards the top (those who already have ownership, instead of those who simply work). Without balancing mechanisms keeping that new wealth distributed, this is simply what you get.<p>After the Great Depression, and then doubly so after the rise of Communism as western countries were trying to keep their citizens from having any reason to go down that path, we had a golden age of capitalist societies that also had appetites for social investment. With nothing over the past 50 years really keeping that a priority for the rich, we've started sinking back into a pre-depression structure.<p>A more thorough analysis (which has been posted on HN before I think): <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...</a>
tl;dr<p>The article is a book review/author interview.<p>The author of the book has a grievance. Rich people can pay to avoid
waiting, inconvenience, and hassle. It isn't fair. the author also
expresses the opinion this leads to much resentment in the have nots.