THE CRISIS OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS CONSTITUTION
Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic
Ganesh Sitaraman
Alfred A Knopf; 423 pages; $28
President Obama labelled income inequality “the defining challenge of our time.” But why exactly? Why am I hurt if Mark Zuckerberg develops Facebook, and gets rich on the proceeds? Some care about the unfairness of income inequality itself, some care about the loss of upward mobility and declining opportunities for our kids and some care about how people get rich — hard work and innovation are okay, but theft, legal or otherwise, is not.
Yet there is one threat of inequality that
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