Like the French Revolution example, this was caused by exploitation and abuse rather than the simple fact of someone's bank account being fatter than someone else's.
No, the French Revolution occurred because of active exploitation and abuse of the lower classes. The French people were not sitting around debating whether to spend the evening playing with their PS3s, going out for pizza, or mailing out a few more resumes. They were sitting around starving.
I can't even begin to do credit to the causes of the French Revolution in a HN post. There are a million better sources, but I think you'll find most of them will agree that "not giving the poor enough money" is not on the list of causes. Taking excessive amounts of money from the poor (and everybody else) is closer to the mark, but you still can't ignore the political climate. The lessons of the American Revolution weren't lost on the French, who came to see Louis XVI the way we saw George III.
TL,DR: the country was bankrupted by the usual zero-sum game of runaway government greed. The common people were tired of being forced to pay for stuff like Versailles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles ) and literally starved of patience.
Nothing like this is even remotely comparable to what's happening today in the US. If anything, we're heading towards feudalism rather than revolution.
Are we not being bankrupted by run-away corporate greed? Probably not, but more importantly, will the average American think we are? That has a much greater chance to be yes.
If some sort of revolutionary spirit starts in the US, corporations will be targeted just as much as the government. Big if, but we are much closer than we were 20 years ago.
