Temin applied W. Arthur Lewis’s economic model – designed to understand the workings of developing countries – to the United States in an effort to document how inequality has grown in America.

…In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check*. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses.* Check*. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector.* Mass incarceration – check*. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes.* Check*. Social and economic mobility is low.* Check*.*

Temin describes multiple contributing factors in the nation’s arrival at this place, from exchanging the War on Poverty for the War on Drugs to money in politics and systemic racism. He outlines the ways in which racial prejudice continues to lurk below the surface, allowing politicians to appeal to the age old “desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks”, encouraging white low-wage workers to accept their lesser place in society.

Study By MIT Economist: U.S. Has Regressed To A Third-World Nation For Most Of Its Citizens – The Intellectualist

hmmmm