during the Great Convergence low- and middle-income groups gained a growing share of the expanding pie. Lindert and Williamson estimate that over this period “the real income per family of the top 1 percent rose by 21.5 percent in the United States, while… average real family income for the bottom 99 percent… more than tripled.”30 In other words, for the first two thirds of the twentieth century greater national prosperity and greater equality in sharing the wealth went hand in hand. In those decades we did not have to choose between growth and equality, as some economic theories have it—we
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