Since the 1970s, the U.S. economy has been sending more and more of its rewards to fewer and fewer people. Once seen as a global exemplar of egalitarianism and middle-class opportunity, America has become the most unequal of developed nations—a land where corporate leaders earn hundreds of times the pay of average workers, and the only population group growing faster than millionaires is the uninsured. Statistics aside, this quarte-century-long trend has changed the texture of American life in ways that threaten our deepest values.

Drawing on the best and latest research, the contributors explore issues such as the real story the numbers tell about how America has changed; dimensions of inequality (education, health, and opportunity); causes of inequality, looking past the usual suspects of technology, trade, and immigration; the persistence of racial disparities; the erosion of democracy and community; and inequality as a moral and religious problem. Not just a catalog of inequality’s ills, the book concludes with a plausible and hopeful policy path—beyond redistribution—to a more just and humane economy.


With contributions by:



Joel Bakan
Heather Boushey and Christian E. Weller
Barbara Ehrenreich
Robert H. Frank
Robert M. Franklin
William Greider
Christopher Jencks
David Cay Johnston
Richard D. Kahlenberg
Robert Kuttner
James Lardner
Betsy Leondar-Wright
Charles Lewis
Meizhu Lui
Bill Moyers
Miles S. Rapoport and David A. Smith
Jonathan Rowe
Theda Skocpol
David A. Smith and Heather McGhee
Jim Wallis
Eric Wanner
David R. Williams and James Lardner