American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

by Joseph J. Ellis

middle-class majority. And therein lies the most unnerving implication of the recent increase in economic inequality. The incentive system of American democracy can survive the existence of a permanent underclass as long as it remains a statistical minority. But the erosion of the middle class is unacceptable and inexplicable because it destroys the functional faith that any hardworking citizen can expect to enjoy a fair share of the American pie. Larger pieces can go to a fortunate few, as long as the many get the bulk of the pie to slice up among themselves. Since 1980, this implicit bargain has broken down. As a result, American history has somehow veered off course in an un-American direction. Over two centuries ago John Adams predicted this would happen, and it did during the late-nineteenth-and-early-twentieth-century era called the Gilded Age.* Now it is happening again. Graphically, the American diamond is becoming the old European triangle.