> Our ruling elites have ignored the issue for decades. Not because they did not care, but because they had no idea how to solve it.

Mostly, it is because they don’t care—it is a problem for other people, not them, except to the extent that those other people get upset and destabilize the system that enriches the elites.

Secondarily, because they understand how to solve it, but it is contrary to their own interests. I mean, to the extent it can be solved with only fairly minor impairment of their own interests, they’ve been dragged into going along with it (that’s how the modern mixed economy has replaced gilded age capitalism throughout pretty much the whole of the industrialized world), but that tooks decades of activism, violence, and economic collapse to drag them into despite the fact that it leaves the bulk of the power of their position intact.