Massive inequality leads to people at the top who view anyone who isn't there with them as moochers and looters. As takers. As people who are less than they are. People who don't deserve to be able to vote. As people who should only be able to vote based on how much they pay in Federal Income Taxes. It provides a pseudo-rational for writing laws that favor themselves, because they're such great jobCreators that if they get richer than they already are, everyone else will benefit, too! They'll have to, because they're Makers! They're the jobCreators. These are all words/phrases/ideas of the people at the top who view anyone else as rabble. As people who should just shut up, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and succeed how they themselves did, by inheriting lots of money and being born on third base.
Massive inequality leads to people underneath the people at the top to view them as out-of-touch. As self-appointed Masters of the Universe who consider themselves to be better human beings and Amuricans. It leads to distrust (ya think?) of the people with all of the money.
You can find all sorts of Devil Libruuls who want to murder the rich and take their money on the internet. Just like I can find all sorts of lunatic conservatives who will openly talk about taking away the votes/rights of poor people since they're just moochers and looters. Hell, you can watch a debate where someone who suffers a catostrophic injury is cheered on for death.
The point is that in this country, it used to be a given that if you worked hard and played by the rules and attempted to better yourself and provide for your family, that you could. Tax laws ensured that the rich could be rich and have lots of liquidity, as long as they re-distrubuted some of their wealth back to the people who worked for them:
Education/training programs. Health insurance. Raises that kept up with increased productivity. Time-off for sickness/vacation.
And you know what has happened? As we've lowered taxes, the rich now don't need to worry about re-investing as much of their profits for tax breaks. So Education/training, health insurance, raises keeping up with prodictivity, fringe benefits/time off, pensions, have continued to shrink and shrink and become non-existant.
When you give the richest people no incentive to help out the people below them through various programs/benefits, and decide that you're not going to pay them more even though they produce more, it leads to the type of inequality we have now.
There were plenty of obscenely rich people in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. But because there was an actual middle class who could expect their lives and their children's lives to improve because they were getting paid higher for better/more productive work, along with other benefits, they weren't so conscious of how much more their bosses were getting paid.
But for the past 30+ years, this has changed. The tax structure/tarrif structure has changed so that the rich don't need to care anymore. Now, if you have a higher education, it's through massive debt, and you're just happy to have a job. So you can't just walk away to get another job at a moment's notice for better pay or benefits. You can't just go and start a business and do something for yourself, because of student loan debt, mortgage debt, etc.
And recently, the rich have been pushing everyone else's noses in it. They've decided that they are going to use their money and lobbying power to push for laws that benefit themselves without benefiting the people who work to earn them their money.
This is why class, wealth, and inequality are coming to the forefront.
You can blame Amurica-hating libruuls and Democrat party operatives and the Kenyan Muslim Atheist Communist Fascist in the White House, but he's just a small artifact of the US sliding into corporate feudalism.