The causes of this breathtaking increase in inequality during the past three to four decades are much debated — globalization, technological change a… - Robert D. Putnam

we tend not to begrudge others their success or care how high the socioeconomic ladder is, assuming that everyone has an equal chance to climb it, given equal merit and energy.

Big, centralized government, with the proliferation of federal bureaucracies and the expansion of public welfare programs, is sometimes said to have undercut the mediating institutions of civil society, “crowded out” private generosity, and sapped individual initiative. This is a common explanation among conservative commentators, who attribute the reversal from we to I in the 1960s to the welfare state.16 Empirical evidence for “crowding out” is modest, for across states in the US and across countries in the world, the correlation between big government and social solidarity appears to be, if anything, faintly positive, not negative.

Neighborhood affluence and poverty have been shown repeatedly to influence many aspects of child and youth development, even after taking into account the characteristics of kids and their immediate families.