Who would have imagined such a ridiculous future?

When I was a kid, I assumed that the world of the future was going to be a wonderful place.

So many great things would happen. Inventions would make our lives better and better, and when we talked about flying cars and disposable clothes and all those sorts of marvels, we couldn't wait to see them. Work would become cleaner and more fulfilling, and we would all find a way to respect each other and get along.

The future

Nobody even suggested that someday television sets would be 10 times bigger and would have high-definition pictures and really sharp sound. If they had, I honestly think we would have asked why. We didn't value television enough to put so much effort -- and so much money -- into it.

If they had told us sports stadiums would be built into entertainment palaces at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars or more, we would have laughed and wondered what was the point. Especially when we were told that tickets to games would cost 10-20 times as much as they did for us. It wouldn't have made sense.

Maybe they would have told us that stores would be open 24 hours a day and closed only for Christmas, and that an awful lot of jobs would require working nights, weekends or even the ominously named "graveyard shift." What would be the point?

What if they had told us that by the time we were old enough to have children of our own, both parents in most families would be working but they wouldn't be any better off financially? Why would anyone think that was a good idea?

In the late '60s, as we came of age, people talked about the Age of Aquarius, a time in which peace and understanding would grow and prosper and the materialism of the '50s would fade away.

Instead of that happening, the wheels came completely off the wagon in the '70s and '80s. We went from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Rodeo Drive almost without missing a beat. By the time the Bicentennial came along in 1976 we were locked into the Me Decade.

The '80s would be even worse.

It was an era about self-love and self-help, of Pet Rocks, Mood Rings and getting in touch with your inner child. We were told to love ourselves as we were, when we actually could have benefitted from at least an oil change and at most a complete makeover.

We started going to war with each other. Half the country thought Ronald Reagan was a national savior and a little less than half thought he was a dangerous bonehead. But it seemed far more important to worry about who had shot J.R.

Between consumerism, television and the fact that people weren't reading anymore, we were so far down the rabbit hole we couldn't even see the way back out. And we really never have made it back. I don't have a TV that covers an entire wall, but we have three 47-inch high definition sets in a house where only two people live.

I haven't been inside a movie theater in nearly three years, but I have hundreds and hundreds of my favorite movies that I watch again and again. Still, I liked it a lot better when a movie was something to see with my friends and not something I could own and watch whenever I wanted.

I would imagine that many of us who grew up in the '50s and '60s would consider the world we live in now somehow nightmarish. We grew up in the most egalitarian era in modern times and we're growing only in a nation whose inequality rivals the third world.

I remember seeing that there are roughly 3 million people in the U.S. who are millionaires. If that's true, that's about 10 percent of the country. My wife and I are very fortunate; we would be in the group just below that 10 percent. But I have close friends who I would imagine aren't in the top 50 percent, and there is something very wrong about that.

There shouldn't be so few winners and so many losers when it comes to financial success.

Especially when so many of the really wealthy seem to insist on policies that won't help the poor or working class at all.

Donald Trump doesn't need more money. Neither do the Koch brothers or the Walton family.

We need to find a way to create more opportunity for the people who really need it and less success for the people who already have plenty.

Otherwise, the future isn't going to be pretty.