The pandemic held up a mirror to America’s gaping and growing inequality. In WaPo, the excellent Eli Saslow takes a look at one family living in an era when children are often doing a little (or even a lot) worse than their parents. “What Dave Jr. and his two daughters were inheriting during a time of accelerating inequality in the United States was the exact opposite of intergenerational wealth: his father’s end-of-life expenses, thousands of dollars in debts, a leftover bottle of anti-depressants, and the Ramsey family’s continued regression from the middle class into the expanding bottom of the American economy.” The death spiral of an American family. (Gift Article) “His father had been a police officer, a restaurant manager, a real estate agent, a private investigator, a Mason and a Little League umpire. He had wanted a large funeral where his friends could share stories about him, a full viewing, a three-volley military salute. It had been a life modeled on middle-class aspirations, and now what was left of it was sitting in the back bedroom of a small rental house across from a sewage refinery on the outskirts of Detroit.” Dave Jr. was so buried in debt, he couldn’t even afford to bury Dave Sr.