Getting what's yours, however cold and brutal and calculating, is a fine fuel for millions who do the daily rise and grind. Acquiring cash is the sole purpose for many (most?) people's grind. And in a country with a bruised and battered social safety net -- thanks to congressional psychos who have dreamed of snuffing out the New Deal since college -- no guarantee of health care, and heart wrenching poverty rates, who can blame anyone for rising just to grind out some money?

It's survival.

"Getting yours" means something entirely different today than it did three or four or five decades ago. I wrote in "96 Ways to Rise And Grind" about an Economic Policy Institute study that tracked worker productivity and worker wages since the late 1940s. The EPI research showed productivity and wages grow together from 1948-1973. The more people worked, the more they were compensated. Fair trade. But that dual growth shattered from 1973-2015, when worker productivity jumped by 73.4 percent and worker wages saw near total stagnation. Compensation for work didn't just drop off over that 42-year span -- it collapsed.

If, by some miracle of late-stage capitalism, productivity and wages had grown together over that latter span -- the way they did in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and early 70s -- an American worker making $50,000 annually today would earn $75,000. The question arises: are you really getting yours?

Here's the ugly society created by almost complete wage stagnation: the gap between the wealthiest Americans, who don't depend on wages to maintain their kingdoms, and everyday working people is wider today than it was during the 1920s. The era we mock as absurdly unequal. The era we see as profoundly (economically) unjust compared to post-World War II America. The era of glitzy parties overflowing with champagne and desperate workers with their collars turned up against the cold, waiting in the snaking line of an urban soup kitchen. A short-lived era defined by opulence in the face of mass suffering.

Today is worse. The nation's top 1 percent saw a 20-percent income spike in 2012, while the rest of us, on average, saw income creep upward by a single percent. Almost all of the income gains reported since the economic collapse of 2008 have been funneled into the pockets of people who own more homes than you do pants.

Do I have an answer for the end of this era of crushing inequality? Well, yes, but you have to catch me at a party after a few (many) drinks and swear to every deity that you're not recording my answer (although a federal jobs guarantee would be a good and less radical start). While this unsustainable system will, one day, collapse spectacularly on itself, I think the concept of "getting yours" can only be exacerbated in this atmosphere. Mix two parts desperation with one part selfishness, add a dash of pull yourself up by your bootstrapsism, sprinkle in some manic fear of immigrants and a simmering resentment, and you have the perfect formula for a society steeped in alienation and isolation.

That's what lies beneath the rise and grind. It's no mistake that the #riseandgrind hashtag has emerged with this horror-show backdrop. Enjoy Arby's.