Good points.
Back in the '50s and '60s, Kennan's 50% was distributed through the population, while today's 33% is concentrated among just a handful of what used to be called Robber Barons or Economic Royalists. Our country is again an oligarchy, beginning to resemble the unregulated, wild West capitalism of the '20s.
Roosevelt's New Deal regulations created an economic boom and large middle class that were the envy of the world. Regulations in the public interest limited the rapacity of corporatists and bankers, but they bristled at having to cut their workers in on profits.
Various interest groups have been chipping away at these for 70 years. The distribution of the anti-regulation Powell Memo organized the movement and, ten years later, Reagan's trickle down economics and the Koch's Anarcho-Capitalist reorganization -- after David's failed, Libertarian vice Presidential campaign -- put the whole movement into high gear.
Since then, privatization and deregulation have been strangling the middle class. Wages have stagnated, while cost-of-living has increased, as more for-profit private interests have replaced non-profit government agencies.
