In psychology, for someone to shift away from an undesired behaviour there are two separate requirements. First, they need the self-awareness to recognise the issue. Second, they need the self-management skills to act on that knowledge. Having the former without mastering the latter is arguably worse than having neither: painful awareness of a flaw extending into perpetuity.
If we swap people for countries and personal flaws for societal ills, I fear America may be in just this predicament when it comes to income disparities.
There are fierce debates over exactly how much US income inequality has grown in recent decades, but what is not in doubt is that inequality is wider in the US than in other developed countries. The average American agrees, with one in five describing the US income distribution as “very unfair”, higher than the share in any other wealthy western country.