To right here in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1982. That’s when then-President Ronald Reagan made it all so very explicit, when he said of the GOP, “We’re the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.”

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There it was. Getting rich was elevated, right then and there, to a status it had not enjoyed in America since the Great Depression. The door was opened, and the American norm of citizen equality was trampled under the consequences that stampeded through the opening.

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Once being rich became acceptable again, it soon became a standard, and then became revered, and then became a need. And the norm-setting institutions, our elites, our gatekeepers and guardians — yes, including Harvard Business School — fell in deeply with the program.

What is wrong with being rich as a norm? Do you really have to ask? Look around. Record inequality. Everyone but the rich feel disempowered. Our nation is on the verge of ripping itself apart. Our democracy teeters on the edge of ruin. Is that enough wrong for you? This is exactly the risk of inequality that used to be well understood. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it, “We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Would that a Supreme Court justice say that now.

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This is a country with unprecedented prosperity. There is more than enough wealth to go around to deliver a purposeful, healthy, dignified life to every American. What there isn’t room for is a class of people who simply cannot stop indulging their opportunity to engorge at the trough and persisting at manipulating the rules to their own personal benefit. People have noticed.