Everyone from pundits and politicians to experts and laypersons are wondering aloud about a long term crisis of our capitalist system since the Great Recession (2007-09) and the crash of 2008 that exacerbated and prolonged it. Demonstrators, consisting primarily of the working poor and their supporters, strike and protest demanding higher state minimum wage statutes. The Occupy movement which began as a protest against financial irresponsibility by Wall Street actually ended up as a movement dedicated to calling mass public attention to the massive and growing unequal distribution of wealth and income in American society. Well publicized studies by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez show the steadily growing socio-economic inequality in the US over the past three decades with such shocking discoveries as roughly two thirds of the net income growth over the course of the Bush up cycle (2002-2007) went to the top one percent of US households and that about 93% of the income growth in the first year of the recovery (2010) went to the top one percent of income earners. Such a highly concentrated economy is bound to be slow and unstable. Famous economists, such a Joseph Stiglitz, former director of the World Bank, wonder aloud if the current crisis is "the price we pay for inequality."
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