So if capitalists wake up to the inequalities in our society and while the middle class slumbers on in a free market dream--will that mean that the capitalists are more concerned about the workers than the workers themselves?

Good piece, destor.

From Harold Meyerson's January 28, 2011 article in The American Prospect "Business is Booming", well worth reading in its entirety for additional data I don't want to include in this comment, at http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=business_is_booming:

The role that even the most widely admired American companies, such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and General Electric, have played in offshoring American jobs has long been a subject of controversy. Their zeal for offshoring has lowered the prices of the goods Americans buy while increasing our trade deficit, shrinking our manufacturing sector, and flattening our wages. But to look at the employment numbers at Foxconn, Apple, Dell, or IBM—whose total worldwide workforce expanded from 329,000 employees in 2005 to almost 400,000 in 2009, while its U.S. workforce shrank from 134,000 employees to 105,000—is to come away with an even more disquieting thought: With each passing year, and even more so during the recession, America’s leading corporations grow more and more decoupled from the American economy. Their interests grow increasingly detached from those of our workers, our consumers—and our economic future.

This growing detachment is certainly reflected in their revenues. In 2001, 32 percent of the income of the firms on Standard & Poor’s index of the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. companies came from abroad. By 2008, that figure had grown to 48 percent. Although precise figures on offshoring are unavailable from either companies or governmental bodies, the evidence of the growth of offshoring is overwhelming. A 2008 survey of 1,600 companies conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the Conference Board (a group of leading corporations) found that 53 percent had an offshoring strategy—up from just 22 percent in 2005. “Very few” companies, the survey concluded, “plan to relocate activities back to the United States.”

The implications of this shift in the conduct of American big business are profound—and terrifying...

You wrote:

As Grantham puts it, we allowed "the vagaries of globalization" and "cheap labor from China" to lead us to this point without putting a ton of thought into the consequences. 

As the saying goes, a question for Grantham might be "who is 'we', kimosabe?"  There have been a number of commenters and advocates desperately trying to call attention to this issue, leading to the very situation we face now, for many years.  Most of these voices have been dismissed as wacky "leftists" for raising such concerns. 

Better late than never, perhaps.  It would have been really, really helpful, however, had many more prominent businesspeople, investors, lobbies representing them, and commentators sympathetic to their interests and outlook seen beyond their noses some time ago, acknowledged the real legitimacy of these concerns, and participated actively and constructively with policymakers and advocates to try to address them. 

We have remarkably reactionary, ideologically hidebound business lobbies in this country that seem almost always to be unwilling or unable to do this.  Maybe it's that they don't like the way folks calling attention to these issues dress or look, or the way they talk, or other aspects of their style, I don't know.  DFH's and all.

But when the major business lobbies, and other individual movers and shakers who choose to do some organizing of their own, get involved, it's amazing how obstacles to policy proposals previously considered nonstarters all of a sudden become, well, starters.  Here's hoping that recent comments by Buffett and these folks you mention are harbingers of a strong, albeit badly belated, trend.