The CAP report implicitly affirms that criticism, and seeks to articulate such a “platform for a chance at prosperity for all.” The effort to do this suggests that Hillary Clinton may be at least aware of the problem she faces. But it also suggests she will not find it easy to overcome that problem — hemmed in as she will be by progressive economic assumptions and by the Democratic coalition.

Those assumptions color the way the CAP report sets the historical scene for the challenges we now face. “In the decades following World War II,” the report begins, “the advanced industrial economies experienced rapid growth and brought an increasing share of households into prosperity. With these changes came a revolution in living standards.” All was well in mid-century America, we are told. But “by the end of the 1970s, inflation and unemployment seemed out of control. In the 1980s, conservative leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power with an anti-government agenda of market fundamentalism and individualism. Measures of inequality, which had been stable or declining, began to increase.” And it wasn’t until “the return of center-left governments in the 1990s, [when] politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair sought to marry economic efficiency with social justice through their policies of the ‘third way,’ ” that the advanced economies found their bearings again.

But now, “developed economies face new challenges for new times” — most notably rising inequality and wage stagnation. And these, in turn, are driven by four major causes: globalization, technological advances, the decline of labor unions and other worker protections, and the collapse of corporate responsibility.

This is the history of the last several decades seen through the prism of progressivism. It distorts the actual history of the late 20th century.