We are rocketing back towards inequality of the Oliver Twist era

The US economy is now almost thrice as big as in the early 1970s – and yet the typical working man finds not a dime of this transformative growth in his pay packet. At an outstanding event in London last week, the Resolution Foundation assembled experts from both sides of the Atlantic to consider the great undeclared class war which has robbed America's workforce of the fast-growing fruits of their labour for so long. Britons would do well to familiarise themselves with this tale of the 40-year squeeze, because there are chilling signs of something similar getting under way here.