In my most recent column, I took the opportunity of the new year to talk about two broad and seemingly contradictory trends in this country.
You don’t need to read all that though, here’s the basic premise summed up in two charts:
What you might call “social inequality” has decreased recently, a trend seen most clearly in the advances in legal same-sex marriage over the last year (and, much more slowly and fractiously, in other areas as well). More than 60% of Americans now live in states where these unions are legal.
At the same time, economic disparity is rapidly increasing. The wealthiest top 0.1% now own as much wealth as the bottom 90%, circumstances not seen since the 1930s.