Frankendesign

Log cabin to White House? Not any more
The State We're In, Will Hutton's explosive analysis of the British economy, caused a storm and became an instant bestseller seven years ago. Now, in The World We're In, he turns his attention to the global picture. In this exclusive extract he argues that the US can no longer lay claim to being the land of opportunity.

The Observer | 28 April 2002

America is the most unequal society in the industrialised West. The richest 20 per cent of Americans earn nine times more than the poorest 20 per cent, a scale of inequality half as great again as in Japan, Germany and France. At the very top of American society, incomes and wealth have reached stupendous proportions. The country boasts some three million millionaires, and the richest 1 per cent of the population hold 38 per cent of its wealth, a concentration more marked than in any comparable country.

This inequality is the most brutal fact of American life. Nor is it excused by more mobility and opportunity than other societies, America's great conceit. The reality is that US society is polarising and its social arteries hardening. The sumptuousness and bleakness of the respective lifestyles of rich and poor represent a scale of difference in opportunity and wealth that is almost medieval - and a standing offence to the American expectation that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and happiness. (...)
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