Then suddenly and unexpectedly in the mid-1970s, Figure 2.8 shows, the Great Convergence was reversed in a dramatic U-turn, to be followed by a half century of Great Divergence, that is, plunging income equality. By the early twenty-first century income inequality in America (especially pre-tax and transfers) was reaching an intensity unseen for one hundred years. So abrupt was this reversal that one of the earliest scholarly accounts of it was subtitled “A Tale of Two Half-Centuries.”31 In the most recent half century, in vivid contrast to the previous half century, what growth there was came
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