and I mean to the left of the distribution graph, not "left" in any political sense of the word, can come from a government which is too eager to please everyone and is too ready to distribute wealth to the poor in order to ensure its own political survival. But it is also a consequence of a private sector more interested in its own individual self-aggrandizement, even if it detrimental to the economic health of the society as a whole. Both factors have been at work in the period you mention (although I would say the last 35, not 25 years). The liberal excesses of the Great Society and the Carter years (I consider both Nixon and Clinton as economic neutrals) were replaced by the conservative excesses of the Reagan era. The pendulum is now long overdue to swing back, let us hope it doesn't go too far to the other side, as it clearly did over the last 8 years.

Statistics about median income, etc show that real prosperity peaked sometime about 30 years ago, and that we have been in a period of slow decline since. Much of this is really not anyone's fault, it is due to changing global economic conditions and some of it can be blamed on errors in government from both the right and the left. But much of it has also lately arisen from the mistaken idea that if we leave the system to do whatever it wants, it will automatically reach an optimum equilibrium. The system is run by individual men and collective institutions that are determined to prosper, even if it as the expense of the society as a whole. And as we have seen. If left to their own devices, they will.