America’s income inequality crisis

Why has America become the most unequal developed country in the world? Timothy Noah set out to find out the answer.

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18th August, 2012

Mag Features

Journalist Timothy Noah grew up believing the United States was the land of opportunity, where the hardworking and able poor could scale the economic ladder more quickly than in class-ridden old Europe. But when he set out to unpick why America had become such an economically unequal society over the past 30 years, he discovered many of his cherished beliefs about his homeland were wrong. It turns out it’s now easier to climb out of poverty in most of continental Europe than it is in the US. Intergenerational mobility in the US stalled around the 1960s, and has stayed static or declined since. ...

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