"A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It
is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting
richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study
from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the
median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011,
at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the
gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom
60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No
wonder some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second
look. In China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu
Rongjun was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s
classic Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the book,” says the playwright...Tensions between economic classes in the U.S. are clearly on the rise.
Society has been perceived as split between the “99%” (the regular folk,
struggling to get by) and the “1%” (the connected and privileged
superrich getting richer every day). In a Pew Research Center poll released
last year, two-thirds of the respondents believed the U.S. suffered
from “strong” or “very strong” conflict between rich and poor, a
significant 19-percentage-point increase from 2009, ranking it as the
No. 1 division in society."