PIXABAY 
The result of wealth accumulation usually attained via unmerited corrupt practices always ends in disaster for any given civilization. The unmerited aspect of this phenomenon isn't something I'm going to get into within this post as it's a complex and nuanced topic in its own right.
We know that trickle-down economics is a fallacy. This has been covered by so many economic theorists and proved false that I'm just not going to spend time linking all the debunking of this theory.
It's true that there are very efficient panhandlers out there now; people like Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones have become the epitome of the new class of human panhandlers (the 99.9999%).
This is the inevitable outcome of what I call The Age of Usury and it's also, in part, concomitant with the devaluation of human labor by the elites. This also is a separate upcoming post so I'm not going to cover this aspect of it here. All I'll say for now is that from my Gnostic perspective the archons are aware that work is a curse brought about by the machinations of the demiurge so there is no particular reason our rulers would value human labor when they're quite aware of why it exists in the first place. There is also a subtle contempt between those who now make a living with their mind and those who do physical labor for a living; the latter now, under this system, via income from their labors only, get to live on the street for retirement. This is due to inflation, usury, and taxes--the death knell for workers.
Hereis an article from the Guardian exploring Ten Reasons Wealth Inequality is Soaring. I'm going to list my own views in point form which, in my opinion, are also responsible for turning most of humanity into panhandlers:
-the rise of the corporation in the past 100-years and its associated legal status which gives the corporation immunity from psychopathic behavior.Appleis a primary example of this as their products are made via the worldwide exploitation of people's for the sole purpose of profit. The home country of Apple's origin is simply not relevant to the corporation. Just a note here that I'm not picking on Apple per se as there are now thousands of these corporate behemoths. I should note that as corporations pursue a monological pursuit of profit combined with A.I. and technology we will only see panhandling grow exponentially.
-as the money supply gets vacuumed up by the elites it puts a stranglehold on purchasing power. In late modernity, this was 'solved' by the issuance of enormous amounts of consumer credit. But this mechanism doesn't really solve the core issues and is more akin to throwing fire on gasoline.
-the oligarchs of the past century have spent enormous amounts of time and energy dissociating humanity from its relationship to the earth. This, in fact, was the primary mode of operation of the early capitalists in England a few hundred years ago. Self-sufficiency has been stymied at every point since then and no more so than the Rockefeller model of education whose primary focus was to create robots for corporations--human robots that are always disposable, but that's another topic, too.
-fiat currency and fractional reserve lending are the primary bad actors in turning humanity into panhandlers; although, if I'm correct, the fiat currency masters are trying to use crypto-currency as a method to solve the sustainability and inequality issues brought on by their earlier mechanisms. At this point, this new mechanism is the primary driver of what could be called a 'new age of panhandling'.
-governments purchased by corporate elites whose politicians have abandoned every metric of decency and honesty to use government as a sole means to satisfy their own whims and desires while fulfilling the agendas of the financial and corporate élite. This has stymied any possible attempts at redress for members of society and the contempt the political class now has for its constituents is consistent with a new culture of panhandling which they are enabling. Of course, this is very much linked to the central bank model.
www.andrewmarkmusic.com suggests this new mode of being has been ushered in by what I call The Unholy Trinity...
Just an end note: if a worldwide culture of panhandling is inevitable, and I believe it is under all the current trajectories, then I suggest that the primary focus should be a fair means of distributing the reward pool of the earth, its resources, and various intelligences. www.postivemoney.org is a step in the right direction.