During the presidential campaign, Trump asked Americans to remember when America was great: what his supporters had in mind were the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, decades when the gap between the wealthiest and the rest was shrinking. Between 1940 and 1980, the bottom 90% of American earners gained more wealth than the top 1% did. This condition of growing equality was what Americans remember with warmth as the time of American greatness. Unions were strong until the 1980s. The welfare state was expanding in the 1950s and the 1960s. Wealth was more evenly distributed, thanks in large part to
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Real American greatness.
