David Leonhardt of The New York Times and John Early of the Cato Institute debate the resolution, “The stagnation of living standards and soaring economic inequality have become the defining economic trends of American life.” For the affirmative is Leonhardt, a senior writer at The New York Times and the author of Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream, which The Atlantic, the Financial Times, and McKinsey & Co. named one of the best books of 2023. He writes The Morning, the Times’s flagship newsletter. In 2012, he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Early is taking the …