The shares of both the upper decile and upper centile in total income reached their nadir in the aftermath of World War II and seem never to have recovered from the extremely violent shocks of the war years (see Figures 8.1 and 8.2). To a large extent, it was the chaos of war, with its attendant economic and political shocks, that reduced inequality in the twentieth century. There was no gradual, consensual, conflict-free evolution toward greater equality. In the twentieth century it was war, and not harmonious democratic or economic rationality, that erased the past and enabled society to
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