I came into town on a highway from Atlanta, the shining symbol of a young and prosperous and growing New South. It was February 2013 and I was making the first of several trips to Albany, Georgia, in the southwestern part of the state, sixty miles from the Alabama border. Jimmy Carter’s evangelism took root here. It is the home Ray Charles evokes when he says Georgia’s on his mind. Stately antebellum plantations line the highway into town, rare historic gems that still stand because this area avoided direct fire during the Civil War.

Today, millionaires and billionaires host lavish…