WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY Derek Bok, The Cost of Talent: How Executives and Professionals Are Paid and How It Affects America (Free Press, 1993) Although there was a flurry of denials from conservatives when the issue first received widespread public attention near the end of the Bush administration, there is no longer any doubt that the highest paid Americans have pulled sharply away from the rest of us. Yet despite a series of prominent books devoted to income inequality, most recently Derek Bok's The Cost of Talent , there remains little consensus on why. Many people cite changes in public policy, notably Reagan's program of tax cuts for the rich and program cuts for the poor. Others mention the decline of the labor movement, the growing impact of trade, and the downsizing of corporations. Largely unnoticed in these discussions has been a more fundamental change, namely, the growing prevalence of what Duke University economist Philip Cook and I have called "winner-take-all...