some excerpts from that article ...

"If income is relatively evenly distributed and there are not very sharp differences between rich and poor, you have a greater sense of community. You have a greater sense of trust. You do not have parts of the community that have superior access to the political system that they can use to advance their own interests ..."

"What you are going to see in a democracy with a weaker middle class is much more populism, more internal conflict, an inability to resolve distributional issues in an orderly way. In the United States right now, you do have this return of populism. It should be on the left, but actually most of it is on the right. If you talk to Tea Party members about their feelings regarding the government, they are very passionate. They hate the government. They think they have been betrayed by elites."

This is the one that Richard questions ..
"The Tea Party is a genuine grassroots movement, so I do not buy into these conspiracy theories that rich billionaires initiated it. When you go to one of these rallies of Ron Paul supporters, they are very passionate. They all tend to be young, and they have just got this libertarian idea in their minds that the government is really the source of all of our problems. So I think the convictions of Tea Party activists are sincere, they are not manipulated by billionaires. But it is true that they mobilize against their own economic interests and for the interests of elites they should despise. I still do not fully understand why they do that."

biLL