Word: ands
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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You see, Winners derive enormous moral solace from believing that their self-interest is the same as society's interest. The success in the intellectual climate of the 1980s of George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty and Charles Murray's Losing Ground, two books which argue that helping the poor...
It is a short intellectual distance from justifying one's own position at the top of the heap to protecting that position against any challenges from the bottom. And in the 1980s, America began walking in that direction.
Admittedly, if you ask people to identify the "class" to which they belong, the professional making $70,000 and the secretary making $12,000 will say the same thing--"the middle class."
But without dwelling on the obvious, a huge social and cultural rift divides these two people. And the rift is becoming wider.
It's been a banner decade for the Winners. They saw their taxes slashed in 1982 and 1986, of course. But that wasn't the best part of it. The best part was that their position as Winners became increasingly stable and hereditary.