Somebody: There's no need to invoke American exceptionalism to note that the trajectory of the U.S. economy is not necessarily the same as for other Western nations. It's true - about 2/3rds of OECD nations have had increased inequality over the last generation. That still lives major nations like Spain and France that have either seen significant reductions in their Gini coefficients or have seen their levels of inequality flat-line in the last generation.
And then we have Latin American countries where, if we can speak of a regional trend in levels of inequality, it has been a decline and not an increase in income disparities. Big countries like Mexico and Brazil have seen their Gini coefficients go down in the past decade and more. So much for the notion that globalization has to mean increased inequality and the immiseration of the working class.
The irony here is that some Marxists have imbibed the propaganda of neo-liberals that there is no alternative to the weakening of the bargaining power of the working class and to increased inequality as a result of cross-border labor arbitrage. But when we peer past truisms and bland generalities about class and capitalism, we see this is not always the case.