To understand the staggering proportions of economic inequality in the United States today, take your pick from a long list of dizzying statistics. In 2016, the top 0.1 percent of households owned about the same share of wealth as the bottom 90 percent.” While the average wealth of the bottom 90 percent of households has remained at the same level since 1986, the average wealth for the top one percent has more than tripled. As The Economist noted in 2014, current conditions in the United States make a modern passenger plane, where business travelers stretch out their legs while the less fortunate squeeze into economy seats, look like a “socialist utopia.”

We know how we got here. The United States’ descent, since the late 1970s, into quasi-oligarchic levels of wealth concentration is a story of globalization, declining union membership, and technological change, among other factors. But one explanation is often missing from this list, and that