If you look at the economic graphs[1][2][3], something nasty and drastic happened virtually overnight, around 1973. None of the growth since then has "trickled down". Our history books don't say anything about a radical overhaul of the economic system in 1973, nor does America have a massively different system than other first world capitalist countries, which do have inequality problems but not on the scale the US does. There's something uniquely bad going on, and since a very small group of people is getting enormously wealthy off of it while the rest get nothing at all, it's reasonable to assume that it's on purpose.

Incidentally another thing happened around 1973 - the incarceration rate began a meteroic rise[4] that did not abate until Obama's presidency. Connecting these facts is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1]https://stephenpruis.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/chart-wages... [2]http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/us-deb... [3]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/2008_Top... [4]https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/cfs-file.ashx/__key...