Once, for a brief period in American history, there was a greater balance between employers and employees, and not such a huge gap between wage-earner and CEO. The balance wore off as the World War ended and the Cold War wound down; those events required something like greater unity in America.
Michael Lind documents what happened next, in his book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. He sees those elites running the table in economics, politics, and culture, and points out how dividing workers into groups conquered them.
Our visit in 2020 still holds up through pandemic, election, insurrection, and inflation.