I took a quick look at the Rand paper. I think I've seen similar documents over the years: the inequality is growing.

I believe that it's important to understand that the large middle class after WW2 was an anomaly in history. Most places in most times did not have that stratification. If nothing else, humanity is just going back to our natural hierarchies. If we don't want a 90% poor and 10% rich society, we need a better plan.

There are all sorts of things that cause a particular voter to turn away from voting the usual way. I lost a lot of respect for the Democrats when they could not convict Clinton in 1998. I may be in a small minority of lelt-leaning thinkers, but enough of us didn't bother going to the polls in 2000--which gave Bush 2 the edge.

But in my ideal world, we should not create history based on a few votes going this way or that way or may go a differet way the next day.