Reversing American Decline -- Inequality is just a symptom. What we need is growth.

From Joel Kotkin writing online at the nydailynews.com:

Across broad ideological lines, Americans now foresee a dismal, downwardly mobile future for the country’s middle and working classes.

While previous generations generally did far better than their predecessors, those in the current one, outside the very rich, are locked in a struggle to carve out the economic opportunities and access to property that had become accepted norms here over the past century...

This has allowed Obama, de Blasio and others shape a new conversation centered on inequality, rather than growth.

Oddly enough, it’s a model that relies on Europe’s example even as the continent’s own economic prospects appear dismal, and mainstream political parties there are registering their lowest levels of popular support in decades....

Sparking beneficial economic growth requires a shift in priorities, and thus presents a challenge to the new class order dominated by Wall Street, the tech oligarchy and their partners in the Clerisy.

It is not enough merely to blame the so-called 1%, but to shift the benefits of growth away from the current hegemons, notably in the very narrow finance and high-tech sectors, and towards those involved in a broad array of productive enterprise.

The American economy’s capacity for renewal remains much greater than widely believed.

Rather than a permanent condition of slow growth, the United States could be on the cusp of another period of broad-based expansion, spurred in part by its rapidly growing natural gas and oil production — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as cheap and abundant natural gas is luring investment from manufacturers from Europe and Asia, and providing good-paying American jobs.

This, along with growth in manufacturing, could spark better times for the middle class, as would the re-igniting of single-family home construction.

If America really wants to confront its growing class divide, it needs to spark such broad-based economic growth, rather than simply feathering the nests of the already rich, privileged and well-connected.
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Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/reversing-american-decline-article-1.1796369