In other words, globalization and the rise of the infotech industry, combined with the sticky economy, and no doubt with other important but perhaps more local changes, created a world of good and bad firms, which in turn contributed to an increase in inequality. In this view, what happened may have been unfortunate, but it probably could not have

One big advantage of focusing on clearly defined interventions is that these policies have measurable objectives and therefore can be directly evaluated. We can experiment with them, abandon the ones that do not work, and improve the ones with potential.

Social scientists have long suspected that people’s sense of self-worth is related to their position in the groups they see themselves as part of—their neighborhoods, their peers, their country. If this were true, inequality would of course directly affect well-being.

old Soviet joke: “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”

In the United States, there is another possible reaction. Because many believe the American market system is fundamentally fair, they must then find something else to blame. If they don’t get that job, it must be because the elites have somehow conspired to give it to an African American, a Hispanic, or at one remove, to a Chinese worker. Why would

The most surprising finding, however, was that the BTB policy substantially increased racial disparities in callbacks. White applicants to BTB-affected employers received 7 percent more callbacks than similar black applicants before BTB. After BTB, this gap grew to 43 percent. The reason was that without the actual information about convictions, th

One simple reason is money. Universal programs in which no one is excluded are expensive. The proposal to pay $1,000 a month for every American would cost $3.9 trillion a year. That’s about $1.3 trillion more than all existing welfare programs, roughly the equivalent of the entire federal budget, or 20 percent of the US economy.

no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won’t

There is also the very real attraction of a program that is universal and does not try to target and monitor people. Most social programs come with complicated screening and monitoring rules to make sure benefits are going to the right people.