We’re often told that the typical third world country is characterized by a small percentage of the population hogging a huge share of wealth and power. Everyone else, the story goes, lives in varying degrees of penury and has little political influence.

For a long time, Americans liked to think of their country as the antithesis of this cliche, but socioeconomic trends over the past three decades are changing that.

It’s generally understood that we live in a time of growing inequality. We now know, for example, that there is a large and growing gap between rich and poor. And money has corrupted our political system so it only benefits a privileged few, resulting in the concentration of political power at the top.

The presidential debates should focus on this subject, but both candidates are too busy shoring up their bases and trying to ingratiate themselves to the precious undecided voters who tip the scales in tight elections. These gladiatorial contests ignore rising inequality and the erosion of the middle class, ambiguously defined as households making an average annual income ranging from $30,000 to $90,000.

Since the mid-1970s, we have seen the living standards of most Americans stagnate. Average wages have remained flat or declined.

Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households has a higher total net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined. That same top 1 percent also has more pretax income than the bottom 50 percent.

Income inequality has reached the highest level since the Great Depression and shows no signs of moderating. During the first full year of tepid recovery from the most recent recession, the top 1 percent of earners realized 93 percent of all income gains.

The fruits of our economy flow increasingly to a tiny minority of corporate CEOs, top-tier symbolic analysts in the legal and financial professions, sports stars and entertainment-industry celebrities who can leverage their market power into membership in a new class of super-rich.

Meanwhile, most American families are trying to keep body and soul together, seeing little or no improvement in their living standards, despite the fact the both parents are often working. This is crazy in an economy in which consumer spending is an important source of economic growth.

New research indicates that the growing gap between rich and poor may retard future growth, shortening economic expansions by as much as one third.

The increasing concentration of income has spawned a second Gilded Age. With it comes the ever­ greater ability of the new super-rich class to buy political influence through contributions to increasingly costly election campaigns, endowments for issue-oriented think tanks and control of advertising media.

It all translates into special tax breaks, such as allowing the hedge fund manager who makes millions to treat his or her income as capital gains, or the major corporation making billions in profits to have little or no tax liability. Both are egregious examples of corporate welfare that results from the unholy marriage of big corporations and big government.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party crowd share a common resentment of how big government and corporate America are in bed with each other. They see the fat cats running the show, while they’re getting hammered.

We are told that’s the way the cookie crumbles in an age of international competition, rapid technological advances and the relentless drive to cut short-term costs. Sure, capitalism is unrivaled in its ability to produce material well-being. But no economic recovery is sustainable unless we can distribute its fruits more widely.

Growth is important, but recovery is little more than an illusion unless the economy can produce a more equitable distribution of wealth. That’s why we should insist that the presidential candidates give us practical proposals to help the middle class share in any future economic recovery.

originally published: October 20, 2012