Other symptoms of stagnation include falling tolerance for other people’s point of view, and a fading enthusiasm to join social groups. ‘I believe that the rising intolerance and incivility and the eroding generosity and openness that have marked important aspects of American society in the recent past have been, in significant part, a consequence of the stagnation of American middle-class living standards,’ writes Ben Friedman, in the The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth.22
