In a paradoxical way, our democracies that provide equal political rights have ended up allowing very unequal economic outcomes to persist. In his new book, Why Politics Fails, Ben describes how we've gotten caught in what he calls the equality trap. Some of us think this is a problem, but it's not one with an easy solution.
Why has the American political system failed to arrest accelerating inequality, and is there anything we can do about it?
• Ben Ansell is professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford and author of “Why Politics Fail”
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