By similarites, I am refering to the national financial crisis, dispossession and anger of the lower class, lack of effective leadership in the governing class and publication of popular media that stirs conflict and resentment rather than solidarity.
I am listening to the excellent Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan, and the social tensions that preceeded the revolution sound familiar to me.
They should sound pretty familiar; but I wouldn't go expecting a revolution anytime soon. There are a couple key differences between the time periods.
1- Borrowing capacity. The US has a very high credit rating and can borrow money at an absurdly low interest rate. There is consumer faith that the US will repay the money it borrows or can be forced into offering some kind of settlement to pay back the money. France before the Revolution could not borrow money like the US can now; neither in the amounts nor at the same interest rates. France had a real problem in that it could cancel debts and simply elect not to repay them; so very few were willing to lend money to the crown. Related to this would be the taxation methods; the US is pretty good at collecting taxes- or at least significantly better than old regime France. To put it simply, the French Crown was not in the business of collecting taxes and instead sold the rights to collect taxes to organizations known as Tax Farms- then it was these who would collect taxes and pay those taxes to the royal treasury. If this system sound liable to corruption, that's because it was.
2- Size of the military expenditure. France's military budget was roughly 75% of expenditures; compare that with the US's ~20% and you can see how huge the gulf was in spending. Now much of what the US spends money on now are institutions developed after the French Revolution; but it is worth noting just how much of the French money was going to paying off foreign wars. Not to mention the French Finance ministry (jacques necker) attempted to balance to budget; but he did so by hiding most of the military expenditures/ interest payments from the official budget- these were seen as extraordinary expenditures instead of ordinary, so they didn't need to be listed in the budget (or Compte Rendu). The accounting process was not open; so it was possible for him to do this and no one to notice for a while. Whereas, arguably in the US to accounting process is more open (though how open may be open to debate) and doing something on quite this scale would be impossible; nor is there a reason to since the US already has access to good credit.
3- Starvation. Things are not rosy for everyone in the US; but the likelihood that a bad crop harvest will endanger the masses is much less than it was during France. France suffered a series of croon failures before the Revolution- which helped ramp up the tension as the price of flour/bread skyrocketed due to hail storms, early freezes, etc... Look at how the prolonged drought in California has affected the average US consumer and you can see there is quite a difference. The US and global trade have made crop failure- at least in the US- much less of a threat than it was for the French before the revolution.
These differences aside (and there are more but these are some of the biggest to keep in mind); you are correct, the last ten years or so have seen a number of striking similarities present themselves. Keep reading/listening and I am sure you will find others besides the ones you just listed.
Hard to generalize, but I would say that the legal system / code in France was seen as somewhat more dysfunctional than we currently have in the US. The question of even what jurisdiction should be holding sway over the proceedings might take a good long while to sort out in and of itself.