It may be a sign of a healthy market, that ultimately can become unhealthy to the society. So it depends on which aspect of the US you are looking at. As peopl

It may be a sign of a healthy market, that ultimately can become unhealthy to the society. So it depends on which aspect of the US you are looking at. As people get disproportionate amounts of money, they get disproportionate amounts of power that they can then use to distort the rules of the game. When there is a small but very wealthy class (say .1% of the population owns 80% of the net worth) then maybe the rest of the population can become oppressed. It is difficult to get good stats on this, but this site has data that suggests since 1983, the top 20% have improved their lot at the expense of the bottom 80%. Income isn't really a good way to measure the gap. If someone makes 500K/year and spends 100% of it on non-assets, they are just returning their money back into the system. It is actually a complex problem to determine if the changes are good or bad, if wealth vs. income is the right measure, and what percentile groups make up the "elite"