This is the first volume in a new series dubbed ‘the case for’ in the political economy section of Polity Press. The author, Sam Pizzigati, has a long track record of criticism of extreme economic inequality and advocacy of a ‘maximum wage’. The latter is a social innovation worthy of much more critical study than it has received to date. Pizzigati is a labour journalist with a  prodigious and continuing output of articles on this subject, as well as several earlier books. His language is generally polemical rather than academic. The book is informed mainly by his long experience of the United States and his concern for justice there. I think his powerful critique of the enormous and still rising inequality everywhere will be found useful by the many who are  concerned at this state of affairs.