I have no doubt about what the United States of America was meant to be. Now, concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefitting proportionally. The editors concluded back then that, with income inequality in the US reaching levels not seen since the first Gilded Age and social mobility diminishing, “the United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society”. The United States now has a level of income inequality unprecedented in our history and so dramatic it’s almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around. He feared what he called, in the second volume of his masterwork, Democracy in America, an “aristocracy created by business”.

Source: The Guardian September 12, 2016 16:51 UTC