Another historial movement
As America changed from the agriculture age to the industrial age, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it became known as the gilded age when vast fortunes were accumulated.
The rich owned the majority of the wealth and they intended to keep it through control of the political system.
If you have seen the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island or the Biltmore in Ashville, North Carolina you can get an idea of that age.
With the rise of Teddy Roosevelt followed by Taft and Wilson the pendulum began to swing back into equilibrium.
However during that time there was the rise of resentment across the countryside voiced by William Jennings Bryan and the Grange movement in the farming communities.
Now we are another historic movement from the industrial age to the technology and information age and power is shifting into cities where those skills are most prevalent leaving the countryside to again wither away.
This is evident in national elections where the huge land mass that has fewer people vote one way and the concentrated cities vote another way.
If the political process works then we should be seeing policies enacted in the future, like began under Teddy Roosevelt, that will began to shift some influence and economic progress back into the land mass represented by main street America or this resentment will continue to build to the point of destructive proportion.
America has always been able to correct its excesses in the past, but sometimes it has been a “close run thing” as the Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo.