The United States economy is one of the most effective on earth in terms of generating new wealth. But for all the wealth it generates, it does an exceptionally dismal job at sharing it broadly among Americans.

Is this the best we can do?

Over the last four decades the debate in Washington about poverty and inequality has been bogged down in a somewhat pointless, often surreal debate about the size of government and the amount spent on behalf of the poor.

Over that same period, the earnings of workers in the bottom half of the income pile have progressed little. American society has buckled under the strain.

The actual size of government? Measured by the taxes we pay, it was about 25 percent of our gross national product in 1970. It is still about 25 percent of our G.D.P. today. And the share of our wealth spent on the poor, apart from money devoted to the rising cost of health care, has not changed very much, either.