Then, in the first half of the twentieth century, came the Great Depression. This utterly catastrophic event was to trigger a series of enormously significant changes to the economy that would alter the selves of the people for decades. This was the first of two crises that would lead to a dramatic reaction against untrammelled individualism. It was the crash, and then World War II, that brought about a new, collective era of ‘class compromise’ between rich and poor. A series of state interventions led to an extraordinary narrowing of the income gap that economists sometimes
