We have a system, loosely described as "market capitalism", which we tolerate because despite its flaws it seems to favor a kind of "progress" that can benefit everyone in practice (where other systems which might appear `better" in theory have not proven effective in the "real world"). But we have also learned that "market capitalism" left unregulated and to its own devices produces gross social inequity and a plunder of the "common weal" for short term gain.
It is the function of democratic government to regulate this system of ours to gain its benefits without suffering its failings and abuse. So doing becomes an "issue" primarily because those who benefit most from the system do not see their disproportionate gain as "abuse", and seek to insure that what regulation of the system there is serves first to perpetuate their advantage. When regulation fails, and the system fails to serve the common good, there comes conflict between the few beneficiaries and the many. Few vs. many would seem a rather lopsided struggle . . . but in the late stages of system failure the few, though few in number, already control the overwhelming majority of wealth and resources (that being the most obvious evidence of failure of the system) . . . and using those resources, the "media" most particularly, are able to manipulate the many, even in an ostensibly "democratic" political environment, into a state of confused powerlessness.
That is the state of America today. Control of all the mechanisms that are supposed to regulate economic society are in the hands of the already privileged few . . . a situation that in the agrarian past was called feudalism and in the industrial 20 the century was called fascism. The political challenge now for the few is to determine what is "just enough" to "trickle down" to keep the many in line . . . to establish just how much (and no more) they must moderate their greed.
The challenge for the many is rather more desperate and more immediate, not least because there is strong temptation to settle for the "just enough" and try to get on with (what there is of) their lives. What everyone should by now realize is that in the US the difference(s) between Republicans and Democrats revolve only around the question of what is "just enough". In America today there is no voice or party articulating the historic American position that "just enough" is not enough . . . a position that perhaps was only ever made tenable or given a chance to flourish by the vast untapped wealth of the Westward Expansion. Well . . . that's over. And the few are not going to give up easily their ever more entrenched position of privilege.
Is it enough for this community, and for "liberals" in general, to argue for just a little more of "just enough", or do we say "enough of that" and take back the American Dream of "fair and equitable" and demand government "of the people, by the people, for the people", with a fundamental goal of a more equitable distribution of wealth in society ? ? ?