The trouble with mainstream America is that it never seems to slow down enough for most people to reconsider what an optimum use of each day might be, individually or collectively. Most American noses are held to the grindstone, sometimes two grindstones. Even when free from work many feel compelled to pack each minute with as much use as possible. The only time multitasking gets a rest is when we’re sleeping, after endless channel surfing to postpone bedtime’s resignation that another workday awaits come morning.

For those fortunate enough to have a job, work life consumes far too much of one’s waking existence. What time remains outside of it seems already gone before it barely begins. For many, well deserved downtime becomes additional work time off the clock, a necessity if one’s to get ahead, or stay ahead of all those vying for one’s paycheck. With job security threatened, camaraderie in the workplace has given way to a desperate competition. For countless trusted employees, downsizing and permanent layoffs are all too familiar rewards for years of loyal contribution to the bottom line.

Capitalism can be a great provider, but, even for those expressing general satisfaction, more and more it requires more and more sacrifice for less and less return on all the blood, sweat, and tears spent endlessly chasing the almighty dollar.

Capitalism’s record of creating great opportunity for the acquisition of material wealth has often excelled, but it has never been equitable. That’s not its nature. Capitalism is about profit, not fairness. Its defenders dismissively argue that opportunity isn’t a promise of success. That’s up to the individual.

Such logic would hold far more merit if everyone had the same opportunities and the same abilities. At its best, capitalism should provide some reasonable measure of success for all who contribute. At its worst, capitalism marginalizes those whom are denied participation or truly can’t contribute. More and more, capitalism comes up short for far too many. Once capable of lifting all boats, capitalism has become an endgame where the haves continue having more and more only if the have nots receive less and less.

The American Dream has always been a tale of classed citizenship where for some it’s the best of times, some enjoy OK times, and others, like those left standing in a game of musical chairs, experience a far worse economic reality.

We’re taught very early on that having more than others is what success is all about, that there’s nothing wrong with accumulating as much wealth as one is capable. Excessive wealth is a deserved reward, due to those that excel in the competition for materialism’s excesses. Little attention is given to the problem that, if an economy is a finite pie, individual slices can only be so generous. Saving part of that slice for retirement or learning how to enlarge the pie for everyone somehow remains the most elusive part of the game.

Once the term “rat-race” had wide currency. That was back in the days when “family values” was also a popular buzzword. Back then, whatever one’s politics, most families valued “keeping up with the Joneses” above all else.

That rat-race was all about “upward mobility.” Today it’s a “race to the bottom” that many are trapped in as American companies continue to send jobs to lower wage labor overseas. Concerns of keeping up with the Joneses has given way to simply trying to keep up with inflation. For today’s generation the dream of upward mobility has turned into a nightmare of crushing educational debt. Capitalism’s increasing lack of once responsible economics has turned its back on those that would still buy into its work-for-reward underpinning if allowed real opportunity.

While the working poor struggle to make ends meet, capitalism now condones maximized profit without reinvestment and investment that risks everything all the time.

Some still rationalize this current version of capitalism. Others think it needs to be seriously overhauled. Most just don’t have the time or inclination to try to figure out who is correct. They’re too tired and disheartened to pay much attention to anything but getting by as best they can, and what politics they’re exposed to only discourages them all the more from thinking things will improve.

For those that have actually followed the presidential race thus far it might seem that America’s interest in politics is fully alive and well. Media coverage is 24-7. Sanders’s and Trump’s alternative populist messages have brought out voters in record numbers defying all expectations.

Reality, however, suggests a far less involved populace. Contrary to what one might guess, in the first 12 primaries only 17 percent of Republicans actually participated. Democratic turnout was 11 percent.

Trump and Sanders have created an insurgency, left and right, against the powers that be. What happens when that insurgency comes up hard against the establishment’s refusal of accommodation should make for some spectacular convention fireworks.

Meanwhile, those most empowered by capitalism profit greatly from those choosing to opt out of democracy, those too enslaved by capitalism to envision their own advancement through truly engaged political participation.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.