 Finally, the public funding that once allowed anyone to join and everyone to be on equal footing now presents discrepancies due to poor and rich towns.Co-authored with Lawrence F. Katz, Goldin explores the United States' economic slowdown in the late 1970s.They argue that it was rising economic inequality at the end of the 20th century, not slow productivity growth nor economic convergence between nations, that was at the root of the United States' economic trouble.