WITH “Social Democratic America,” Professor Kenworthy provides a welcome addition to a number of recent studies — initiated by last year’s superb “Capital in the 21st Century” by Thomas Pickety — focusing on the growing chasm between the wealthiest elite and “the rest of us.”

This book, however, is not primarily concerned with further documenting the gravity of the situation but to drawing attention to specific policy proposals intended to address and reduce this disparity and its consequences.

The chart from page 37 clearly shows how growth in average income over the past 30 years has overwhelmingly benefited just the top 1 percent of citizens in the US.

In fact, the lion’s share of this growth actually occurred within the uppermost sliver of that 1 percent, reflecting the inflated compensations paid to the CEOs of private companies as well as to key players in the financial services industry. Meanwhile, for the bottom 60 percent of Americans real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated, leaving millions ill-prepared to cope with steadily rising costs for health care and other essentials. At the same time, the social safety net, designed to protect against job loss, disability, and insufficient income in retirement, has become significantly frayed.

Welcome high employment rates in recent months, unfortunately, have not been accompanied by a similar uptick in wages. Further, many of those re-employed have had to take positions paying considerably less than their former positions as the largest numbers of job openings are occurring in lower compensated positions.

This significant erosion of the economic, social, and political well being of most Americans actually began over 30 years ago, and dramatically reversed the post World War II environment — extending through the 1960s — of expanding opportunities for the middle and lower economic classes.

The cumulative effective of several decades has been to create, in Kenworthy’s words, a growing “opportunity gap” that represents a real and grave threat to America’s future ability to retain its economic and intellectual competitiveness for the rest of the 21st century.

Indeed, Kenworthy shows that in many ways the United States has already fallen into the middle to lower ranks. This can be shown by comparing the US experience with other wealthy, industrial nations in such areas the value of health care received vs. expenditures, or the number of people graduating from college annually, or the level of employment among adults of employable age.

Unless and until a sizable majority of US citizens reacquire the ability to attain higher levels of education and well-compensated employment, other nations with more balanced economic and social systems will continue to surge past the United States. The longer the US delays implementing corrective measures, the more difficult it will be to regain our competitiveness, and the more likely will be the continuing corruption of our democracy.

Nordic examples

The graphic from page 56 shows that the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have significantly less inequality of opportunity than does the US. While smaller disparities in wealth also exist in these countries, they have deliberately crafted governmental policies that ensure equal opportunity to all citizens, resulting in a dramatically smaller gap in higher education, supportive parental leave, and adequate unemployment, medical and retirement benefits — all essential for a truly fulfilling life.

Kenworthy suggests that the most effective way to begin restoring greater economic and social equity in America would be for the US to emulate the more generous wage and benefit structures of the Nordic countries. For this to happen we must raise the tax rates on the nation’s wealthiest citizens (the people who have benefited from increased income and wealth since the 1980s).

While acknowledging that this will face substantial resistance from the wealthy and their advocates in the Republican Party, Kenworthy believes that current extreme disparity will cause the American people to come to demand such changes.

Although I embrace his proposals, I am not nearly as optimistic about this coming to pass. The current dismal political environment that has created and profited from growing economic disparity is not a transient phenomenon. Rather, by skillfully manipulating the last two redistricting cycles (which follow each federal census every 10 years), Republicans have skillfully used the disreputable practice of gerrymandering (drawing electoral districts in such a manner as to favor the party in power) both to solidify their control over a growing number of state legislatures and increase their chances to maintain the majority of seats in the federal House of Representatives.

This is why — despite clear majorities of Americans favoring such policies as higher taxes on the wealthy, vigorous enforcement of environmental laws, and higher minimum wages — the Congress continues to do nothing to alter the dynamics favoring the rich.

Nor will this structured advantage be easily undone, as the Supreme Court’s recent rulings essentially allow the wealthy elite to buy elections.

Furthermore, the only other national party in the United States, the Democrats, seems to lack anything faintly resembling a coherent, attractive, alternative vision. Even they no longer speak of the needs of the many outweighing the wants of the few, nor of the necessity of government guaranteeing a viable social safety net for those the casualties of unconscionable capitalism.

It is possible that matters will eventually get so desperate that people will demand change, but I am far from certain of that. In the meantime, as months and years drag by with no real effort to level the playing field, the existing oligarchy will only become more entrenched.

The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives, and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.