This is what springs to mind whenever somebody says or implies that there's a threshold wherein people will "rise up" - e.g. pre-French Revolution levels of ine

This is what springs to mind whenever somebody says or implies that there's a threshold wherein people will "rise up" - e.g. pre-French Revolution levels of inequality. I don't see a middle class as becoming resurgent again until we have something similar to the battle of blair mountain (a labor uprising that presaged a new labor movement, where the brutality of the strikebreakers was off the charts) or elites who are once again living in mortal fear of domestic and foreign communists like they were in the 1950s.