Following World War II inequality declined and the blue collar middle class grew. Economists call this period the Great Compression. It was a product of the New Deal, labor and financial regulations, widespread unionization, and social investments in education, science, research and development and the infrastructure.
More than forty years of attacks on unions, deregulation, financial liberalization and privatization have undermined the middle class and the nation's shared prosperity. Inequality has soared to heights not seen since the Gilded Age. Upward mobility, once a hallmark of the America promise, is less likely than in other industrial democracies. The United States increasingly resembles a banana republic.
The nation's business class has waged a one sided class war against the unions, wages and benefits of private sector workers since the 1970's. Now they and their political spokeman like Scott Walker have turned their fire on firefighters, teachers and other public servants. Business Week put it bluntly in 1974 when it declared: "Some people will obviously have to do with less...it will be a bitter pill for many to swallow the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more."