The huge costs of social deprivation make the US poorer, even as the top 1% gets richer. Fix that and you fix the budget deficit On the heels of the US government’s announcement that personal income of Americans has dropped for the first time in two years, Britain’s Richard Wilkinson – co-author with Kate Pickett of the book Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone – comes to Washington this week to talk with Congress about income inequality and its deleterious impacts on society.    Whether any of this will be news to an American audience is doubtful, as no one is under the illusion that the US is doing well economically.