and actually lifted all boats in a way that was genuinely fair, I'd be fine with seeing us all enjoy a higher standard of living. Excess profits could be used to help those in need at home and abroad.

Everybody trying to get one over one another

made possible by deregulation and a few other turning points gone wrong at the Supreme Court & elsewhere (e.g. Citizens United).

E.g., we've deregulated Wall St. in a hundred ways that have enabled massive looting of the real economy (the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the decision not to regulate credit derivatives, the legalization of naked shorts, etc.);
We've allowed labor protections to be eviscerated;
We've repealed restrictions on the consolidation of media ownership;
Etc. etc.
– the list is long.

Once we allow (through inattention, etc.) those at the top to push through measures that make cheating and exploitation easy, they start doing it, and pretty soon the rest of us are faced with the awful choice of either beating them or joining them in their bad behavior – and too often, we join them.

"When plunder becomes a way of life
for a group of men…, over the course of time
they create… a legal system that authorizes it
and a moral code that glorifies it."

–– Frederic Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, 2nd series (1848), ch. 1 Physiology of plunder.

Warren Beatty as Reed: “Profits” (re WW1).