Journal of the American Medical Association data for US.

Average life expectancy difference for 1% richest and 1% poorest citizens is around 10.1 years for females and 14.6 years for males. Top 1% males live 87.3 year and females 88.9 years, poorest live 72,7 for males and 78.8 for females.

We call that the Reagan revolution.

62% ask gang leaders to put some restrains to their best performing members.

Depends what you mean by best performing. you mean has the most profits? Some are the most profitable get that way not by doing anything useful but by manipulating laws and governments and destroying environments and life.

When adjusted for inflation, wages for investment bankers and securities-industry employees, including salary and bonuses, increased 117 percent from 1990 through 2014, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Over the same period, wages for all other industries rose 21 percent, to $51,029 in 2014, about one-fifth of the $264,357 that bankers and brokers earned that year.

I think you don't like capitalism ;)

Small surprise, even each capitalist individually don't like capitalism. :-)

I still think it has a future provided the middle class is kept large

Middle class is just mythical creature made for media.

that the state adequately manages the market to prevent excessive wealth concentrations among individuals and corporations

Let me rephrase this "that the alpha lion adequately manages the feast to prevent excessive murders among zebras and make it just enough that all lions and wolves won't be hungry (with some slack, of course)" :-)

In other words - you can not ask collective capitalist to act in the interest of oppressed class. Only time they do it is if they have real danger, so they throw a bone or two. And tell usual fairy tale about zebras being middle class, so they won't worry too much. Murders must be human, you know, civilized. Plus as scientist showed stress hormones make meat not delicious.

It's the job of the state to provide some type of redistribution that's tolerable and not punitive. Of course the very word "redistribution" in the USA has an equivalency now of the word Nazi or Satan.

State do not make any fair "redistribution". State is complex machine made and run by ruling class. Sometimes capitalists can throw you a bone, if it is good for them. But only if it is good for them, not for other reason :-)

Once you give power to a small group of people, it's difficult to take it away

Do not know that this mean, but I think it means that you believe that small group rule and force their vision and wishes to everyone.

It is wrong idealistic view. Elites always express interests of ruling class, and if they don't - it ends bad for them (or for ruling class, as in this case they start to represent opposite or new class).

Only rich people can get educated now.

It was always same during slavery, feudalism and capitalism.

The elites of America don't want citizens, they want slaves. Why outsource to China when we can grow our own servant class?

Not elites, any capitalists. Even small ones.

Middle class whites are now convinced that the source of their misery is Mexicans, Muslims, and other minorities. The Three M's of the American Apocalypse.

Well, usual stuff. Capitalists always show you someone who is responsible for this shit. Just not them.

"Death to them all!"

I'll surprise you. If you somehow (in fantasy) kill all oligarchs and big corporations new ones will appear almost instantly, from small and middle businesses. Surprise.

After more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/

These are middle-class kids, on working-holiday visas to Australia - for whom there's often no work back in their home country.

From the Doco's transcript:

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What's happening to Mo and Kevin in Australia - and to more than 150,000 migrants on the 417 working holiday visa, here to toil in our factories and on our farms - is shameful.

JOANNA HOWE, DR., SENIOR LECTURER, UNI. OF ADELAIDE LAW SCHOOL: It's not an Australia that we would put on the tourism brochures. It's not an Australia that we would talk about publicly. But it's an Australia that, where it exists, I'm ashamed to be a part of.

TONY SNELSON, NATIONAL UNION OF WORKERS, SA: It is definitely the modern-day equivalent of slavery.

(Excerpt from Coles TV advertisement)

CURTIS STONE, ANNOUNCER (Coles ad): Coles is bursting with delicious, in-season Aussie fruit and veg...

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It's a far cry from the glossy supermarket ads.

CURTIS STONE (Coles ad): ...at Coles.

(Excerpt ends)

(Excerpt from Woolworths TV advertisement)

ADVERTISING JINGLE: We're Woolworths, the fresh food people...

(Excerpt ends)

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The brands we trust, the food we buy and eat on a daily basis.

(to Tony Snelson) If we were to be told where our food was really coming from, what would be printed on the punnets of our tomatoes and strawberries?

Tony Snelson: It would say, "Picked and packed by exploited labour."

(If you want to view full, original video [link below] from outside Australia, you may need a VPN or proxy connection, sorry).

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/05/04/4227055.htm

There is no one big secret plan to control the people.

Of course not :-) It is bunch of small and medium and quite public plans to fuck people :-)

They have the ability to create a wonderful world but they are not as smart as you would believe. They are the same as the idiot next to you.

You mean that they have the ability to go, find the rope and hang themselves? Well, it can be wonderful.

All those loans, all that non-recognition of default - comes from QE, ZIRP and bank balance sheet fraud. It is the mechanism to destroy the middle classes while enriching the 0.01%.

Do not make things more complex :-).

Things are simple now - only real thing that elites want is to somehow reduce population, as it is around 3x-5x more than they need. Under constant idiotic talks about cycles and history repeats elites and their servants hide facts that tell us that most of the population is no longer required. As they are doing repetitive (easy to outsource or automatize) jobs or checking/ruling/taxing someone who are doing such jobs.

Of course elites also constantly take part in negative selection process, so it will be fun process to watch. I think they'll do something spectacular, instead of simple purges with weapons of mass destruction.