ABSTRACT
Michael Lind has called income inequality “the prevailing social issue of our time.” These days, the designation meets little argument.1 But this development is recent. Income inequality in postwar America began to rise only in 1970, and the re-emergence of inequality as a social issue dates only to the late 1980s. It took Reaganism to reawaken class consciousness in American political life. Before that, attention had been on other issues.
