The Unequal States

In the US today, the Gini coefficient—a measure of the distance separating rich and poor—is comparable to that of China.

notes Tony Judt in an essay exploring the fate of social democracy in the United States. He quotes Adam Smith:

The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Elizabeth Warren charts the death the American middle class.