>> Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society.
and
>> That was the future predicted by Karl Marx, who wrote that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.
The world has changed drastically since Karl Marx, in fact so much that Marx wouldn't ever recognize the world if if he were to suddenly thrown here. The biggest change is the definition of wealth as a dynamic entity which can be created and expanded with work. Unfortunately this didn't exist in the time Marx, or even if it did- the access to such an activity was limited to only a certain set of individuals.
>> You can see America’s creeping Serrata in the growing social and, especially, educational chasm between those at the top and everyone else. At the bottom and in the middle, American society is fraying, and the children of these struggling families are lagging the rest of the world at school.
I laugh when people write things like these. I am an Indian, staying in Bangalore. If you say the US is struggling, I would say you have no clue about other parts of the world. You have no clue what struggling means, no clue what hunger means, no clue what poverty or lack of education or health care means. Think of it this way, even the poorest in the US would be like 10x better of than the poorest in the other parts of the world.
>> Economists point out that the woes of the middle class are in large part a consequence of globalization and technological change.
I would say these changes are good for the US and the world in general. A lot of co operation and competition means things will move quickly.
>> Tolerance for high executive compensation has increased, even as the legal powers of unions have been weakened and an intellectual case against them has been relentlessly advanced by plutocrat-financed think tanks.
Sorry, is the word Tolerance the right word? It makes it sound like some sort of a criminal scam is going around in those circles which every one needs to put up with.
Sorry but the author seems to point what we generally call as 'Socialist guilt'. The problem is people automatically label the ambitious, hardworking and people who look for big rewards as greedy. This problem is an unfortunate consequence of communism and to an extent socialism in general. Unless these people are made to believe that there is inherent evilness in money and desire for it, they really can't sell their philosophy. The direction in which a communist thinks is to visualize money and in general wealth as a minimal thing merely required for survival. And other things are also pushed, like for example glorifying poverty- Promoting rationing of things etc.
The author fails to understand why there are 1%'s anyway. Which is that a capitalist society believes the rewards are not fixed, but vary with effort applied towards the work done to achieve goals. Its not like somebody just called a person in the cabin and wrote them $1 million check. You are selling something and somebody is ready to pay a price for it. This of course requires working hard, taking risks and going through tough times to get there. Not everybody would like to do that, because some people are just happy with what they have now. But just because those people don't want a little extra, it doesn't mean those who want it and earn must share their rewards with others.
The fact is nearly everybody wants to be rich, some just convince themselves they don't want to after considering the effort they need to expend to get rich. But later when they look at somebody getting rich, they just happen to either proceed with all this drama.
Unless you are ill, or disabled or limited for another genuine reason can't work to get successful, you just can't blame somebody else for your problems.