"Their Analyses of the Growing Economic and Social Disparities in America Are Strikingly Different"

"Between 1947 and 1970, every income group in America experienced economic advancement. As James K. Galbraith reminds us in Created Unequal, the 1950s and ’60s were unique because government policies—social as well as economic—provided a firm foundation for the gains experienced by families across the board. Lower-wage workers benefited from a wide range of protections, including steady increases in the minimum wage, and the government made full employment a high priority. There was also a strong union movement that ensured higher wages and more nonwage benefits for ordinary workers.
"But by the ’80s, the trends for lower-wage workers had been reversed."

William Julius Wilson in The Nation reviews Timothy Noah's The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It and Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010.