The American middle class is vanishing before our eyes, losing one-third of its share of national earnings between 1970 and 2014. Meanwhile, the rich got richer and the poor stayed poor. The United States is on its way to becoming a nation of rich and poor, with fewer families in the middle. In this book, the economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at this economic divide. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin points out that although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people of any race. Poor whites are affected by budget cuts to social services, but conservative politicians consistently cast recipients of "welfare" as the Other -- black, Latino, not like us. Moreover, politicians use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast and entrenched prison system rather than to education.

Many of the poor live in conditions resembling those of a developing country -- substandard education, dilapidated housing, few employment opportunities -- and to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide, Temin draws on the economic model of a dual economy, created sixty years ago to study developing countries. But we need not resign ourselves to a third world-style income gap. Temin outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor.