Times mag has a package on wealth, poverty, and inequality.

From the cover story on John Edwards:  There's no doubt he wants very badly to win, and yet there are times when the entire campaign seems little more than an excuse for him to talk about the issue with which he is now most closely identified: the case for the 37 million Americans living in poverty.

More: "As the first candidate of the post-Bill Clinton, postindustrial era to lay out an ambitious antipoverty plan, he may force Democrats to contemplate difficult questions that they haven’t debated in decades — starting with what they’ve learned about poverty since Johnson and Kennedy's time, and what, exactly, they’re willing to do about it."

And: It was Elizabeth, hearing Edwards expound yet again on poverty, who finally pushed these other suggestions aside. What Edwards clearly cared about most, she said, was poverty. She knew her husband better than anyone, and she knew that poverty was the issue that really lighted him up during the campaign, the one he had brought home with him and railed about in the privacy of their kitchen. Maybe it wasn’t the most exploitable issue in Democratic politics, but if that’s what animated Edwards, why shouldn’t he just go out and do something about it?...Edwards stopped returning the calls of all the campaign consultants who once ruled his routines and his rhetoric...he seemed to me a changed man — liberated, self-assured, a little defiant.

Lots of interesting stuff in this issue, including this piece on Ruby Payne and social/economic class.

Related: NYT book review on Robert Frank's Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich; an excerpt in the WSJ says, "butlering has become one of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States after more than a half-century of decline, driven by the greatest surge in American wealth in nearly a century. Over the past 10 years, the number of multimillionaire households has more than doubled. As of 2004, there were more than 1.4 million U.S. households worth at least $5 million and more than 530,000 worth more than $10 million, according to the Federal Reserve."

Comments

[coturnix]

The Next Hurray has an excellent dissection of the Matt Bai piece.