I just finished reading Christopher Hayes' Twilight of the Elites, and I'd like to add this to the list of books I recommend Slopers read.
It's a marvelous examination of meritocracy in America – its value as well as its failings – and applies particular focus to the sharp growth in wealth disparity over the past thirty years.
I personally believe that books like this and the cures they advocate (namely, to soak the rich) aren't really going to materialize into action until widespread calamity strikes, but they do make for enriching and thought-provoking reading nonetheless.
There was one passage I liked in particular, which I shall happily type for you now. It sums up the theme of the book nicely:
Along with all of the other rising inequalities we've become so familiar with – in income, in wealth, in access to politicians – we confront now a fundamental inequality of accountability. We can have a just society whose guiding ethos is accountability and punishment, where both black kids dealing weed in Harlem and investment bankers peddling fradulent securities on Wall Street are forced to pay for their crimes, or we can have a just society whose guiding ethos is forgiveness and second chancves, one in which both Wall Street banks and foreclosed households are bailed out, in which both inside traders and street felons are allowed to rejoin polite society with the full privileges of citizenship intact. But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.
