Thanks for this, good read. What struck me about the first chart is that it matches so closely many, many charts of issues such as income, wealth, labor and employment, wages, health outcomes, education, and other measures of the general welfare - almost everything takes a sharp break in the few years around 1980. That was the year that changed everything in America. Add in the SCOTUS overriding the election in 2000, 9/11, the financial crash of 2008, and the tea party explosion in 2010, and it paints a perfect picture of an America before, and an America after.