> Widening inequalities in pay, health and opportunities in the UK are undermining trust in democracy, says an Institute for Fiscal Studies report.
It's addressed again, later in the article:
> Sir Angus said "people getting rich is a good thing" but not if it meant "enriching the few at the expense of the many".
In the U.S., we talk of the American Dream, but the more modest versions of it weren't really a dream, but more of a promise, or an agreement: You could get by, and even modestly prosper, by being a person of good will with a dose of diligence and hard work; life could be fair. I think that got lost in the inevitable exaggeration of that dream for dramatic effect, things along the lines of forming the next Google in your garage or of winning the lottery or getting promoted into the C-Suite for your ingenuity or "moxie" or whatever. Granted, this hasn't been a credible belief for all sectors of society (It helped to have had white skin.), but it enjoyed some prevalence. To the extent that it was believed, it animated people's actions. They could bear up under a dreary job to send their kids to college, or to save up for retirement, or both. Devastations like cancer or some other personal disaster could be regarded as exceptions, enough so to hold the Dream together.
It just isn't like that anymore. Predatory insurance companies seem bolder in their greed. Hospitals seem complicit. The easy money available from being the only manufacturer of (honestly pretty shitty) cars went away, and labor prices deflated out from under the working classes. Houses, formerly built to last a lifetime, are built to sell, and then fall apart. The whole thing has turned to ashes.
Honestly, the honest, modest version of the American Dream is gone. Hard work is rewarded with insecurity and layoffs. The ACA even seems tenuous under Republican rule, and that only for the slight majority that think the ACA to be progress over private victimization. All that seems left is the prospect of walking over one's peers to a better life. We may malign CEOs as having said, "Fuck you, I've got mine," but we feel left with, "I'm sorry, I have to get mine."
The point of this ramble is not to diminish the contribution of naked inequality of the scale we're seeing. (I think, practically speaking, that's the cause.) Rather, the point of this ramble is that it's something like the modest American Dream that has to be tenable in order for a stable working class, and therefore democracy, to limp along much longer. Where there is no vision, the people perish.