Why are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer?
The short answer is, we don’t know. But there are two popular stories. One is a right-wing popular story which says it’s not happening and that it’s all politically motivated. Much of what I’ve written has been an attempt to debunk the well-financed attempts to declare that there is no issue of income inequality. You mean by laying out the facts? Yes. But the problem is how you look at the facts. One of the great myths of American life is social mobility. Our belief in Horatio Alger stories is really a lot larger than the reality. The fact is that most people who are in the upper tiers of the income distribution were born there and most people who are in the bottom were born there. But there’s almost a disinformation campaign to claim this isn’t true. And what’s the other popular story? Well, the myth on the left is that it’s all the fault of imports, that it’s the global economy that’s done it. And looking at the numbers makes it clear that this is not the main story. It’s probably so
