Bye Bye Miss American Pie...(?)

At first I thought the passage below was kind of not interesting but the more I read it the more intrigued I am by it and the more pressing the question it poses seems.

"We've changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don't think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries–we're actually conscious of our rights as American citizens and the nation's responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie. We think of ourselves now as eaters of the pie instead of makers of the pie. So who makes the pie?"

... from David Foster Wallace's posthumously published novel, The Pale King, set mostly inside the hallways and cubicles of an IRS audit center.