Wither the Nation?Wither the Nation?
There's a debate raging this election year over whether America is in the throes of a new Gilded Age, with the nation's riches increasingly concentrated among a tiny elite, leaving the rest of the population financially and politically disenfranchised. Pundits like Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and economics professor at Princeton University, commentator Kevin Phillips and journalist David
Anne Field, freelance journalist, Pelham, N.Y.
There's a debate raging this election year over whether America is in the throes of a new Gilded Age, with the nation's riches increasingly concentrated among a tiny elite, leaving the rest of the population financially and politically disenfranchised.
Pundits like Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and economics professor at Princeton University, commentator Kevin Phillips and journalist David Cay Johnston, have been sounding the alarm. The United States, writes Phillips in his book, Wealth and Democracy,1 is “the most polarized and inequality-ridden of the major Western nations.” Says Johnston: “When a handful of people have all the money, it's not a democracy. It's an oligarchy.”
On the ...
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