Gradual change back to a realistic capitalist society where there is a real middle class or the “let them eat cake” kind of change?

Hat tip to The Big Picture about the Financial Times article entitled The crisis of middle-class America:

But the anger is human and increasingly political. “I have this gnawing feeling about the future of America,” says Spence. “When people lose the sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to ­orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine.