It's not been as politically polarized? Let me remind you that in the 1960's (often held up as a golden age of lower inequality and strong unions), we had a multi-million member political terrorist group attacking soft targets on a regular basis. Remember Bombingham? Countering them we had a large armed separatist group.

Nowadays all we have are some internet Hitlerites who make Pepe the Frog memes and watch tentacle porn.

One of the things Picketty pointed out is that with rising inequality, inherited wealth starts dominating the economy...A society of high inequality over a long time can not be a society of "the self made man".

As the contemporary US demonstrates, this is false. We have a higher proportion of self made billionaires than ever before. For example:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/03/there-a...

Picketty even acknowledges that all the official statistics go against this claim, he just postulates that there are secret inherited fortunes that the statistics don't capture.

In any case, if you really believe inequality rather than poverty is the problem, I invite you to come to India. Way less inequality than the US. Granted, there's a 50% chance you won't have a flush toilet, but that's not a problem if no one else has one either, right?