how much lip service its more fortunate denizens pay to a progressive worldview. We really couldn’t ask for a nicer elite. Yet the effects of how they spend their money are hardly progressive. For all the emphasis we place on our multicultural cities, they epitomise our oligarchic reality. In the US, the more liberal a city’s politics, the higher the rate of inequality.45 The most glaring examples, such as San Francisco and New York, are demonised by conservatives as citadels of far-left politics.
