There are some Republicans, however, who aren’t subscribing to this agenda. According to a new poll, a majority of low-income Republicans believe that the America’s economic system unfairly favors the wealthy and that the government does not do enough to help the poor:

In a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early October, 57% of lower-income Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the government does too little for poor people. Just 18% said it does too much.

By contrast, higher-income Republicans took the opposite view; by roughly two-to-one (44% to 21%) Republicans with incomes of $75,000 or more said the government does too much, not too little, for poor people.

Indeed, while sharing the public’s general distrust of the government, 70 percent of low-income Republicans agree with the 99 percent movement that “a few rich people and corporations have too much power in the U.S.” And given that nearly half of all Americans are one financial shock away from falling into poverty, it is no wonder that even Republicans are questioning their party’s priorities.

In an interview with the BBC, Gates noted “taxes are going to have to go up” and thus he’d prefer that they “go up more on the rich than everyone else.” There needs to be “a sense of shared sacrifice,” he said, adding, “right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should”:

GATES: Well the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice.

BBC HOST: Is that a message you think that works with other people as wealthy as yourself, or is it just a small circle of friends — yourself, Warren Buffet, a few others.

GATES: Well, I hope we can solve that deficit problem with a sense of shared sacrifice — where everybody would feel like they’re doing their part. And right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should.

Watch it:

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has declared that people with Gates’ view are just riddled with “envy.” But considering that Gates’ wealth dwarfs Romney’s millions, it’s highly doubtful that Gates is envious. He, like an increasing number of millionaires, just views paying his fair share as the right thing to do.

This seems practically designed to be played at Obama-Biden rallies (if not the Democratic National Convention itself). The choice of Chicago as the origin point for that sense of mutual care seems pretty deliberate. The song itself relies mostly on that central mantra, and less on the striking imagery that to my mind is the hallmark of so many of Springsteen’s best songs. But “Where’s the work that set my hands, my soul free / Where’s the spirit that’ll reign, reign over me / Where’s the promise, from sea to shining sea” sure seems like an apt set of questions in an age of continuing recession and concern about the ability of the American dream to pass viably from one generation to the next. Especially given that the title of his new album is Wrecking Ball.

America is supposedly a land of opportunity, but increasingly the data shows that we are a country where parents’ earnings are paramount in determining their children’s future earnings. This sort of class-stratified society is exactly what most of us think America is not (or at least should not be). Plus, this kind of class calcification is bad for economic growth.

The relationship between today’s inequality and tomorrow’s economic mobility was a key theme of a speech by Alan Krueger, Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, at the Center for American Progress last week. To show how class has become calcified in America, he showed this chart, which he called the “Great Gatsby Curve”:

In the chart, the Gini coefficient, one of the most-commonly used measures of income inequality, is on the x-axis. The higher the Gini, the more unequal a nation is. Notably, for 1985, the United States was more unequal than any of the other nine advanced economies shown. A measure of economic mobility is on the y-axis. This measure, the “intergeneration earnings elasticity” measures how important a parent’s earnings are to predicting their child’s future earnings (in this chart, only looking at fathers and sons).

Imagine two American fathers, Middle Class Dad and Rich Dad, standing together with their adult sons. Rich Dad earned 100 percent more than Middle Class Dad when the boys were young. This chart shows that Lil’ Richie will earn about 50 percent more than Lil’ Middle.

When a parent’s economic status has too big an impact on his children’s economic status, it has a pernicious impact on the economy. Today, somewhere in America, there’s a young toddler who may be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (or just a really terrific manager who boosts productivity at her firm). But, if she’s not Rich Dad’s little girl, our economy may never benefit from her talents and that would be a loss for everyone.

As economists Flavio Cunha and James Heckman put it, “The best documented market failure in the life cycle of skill formation in contemporary American society is the inability of children to buy their parents or the lifetime resources that parents provide.” As they say, you can’t choose your parents.

Now even members of his own party are damning the callous nature of his work. Chafing from the criticism, Romney blasted his “desperate” opponents yesterday for joining President Obama in “put[ting] free enterprise on trial” and engaging in “the bitter politics of envy.”

This morning on the Today Show, host Matt Lauer asked Romney — twice — whether he truly believed any questions regarding the practices of Wall Street or the distribution of wealth and power is merely “envious” or more about “fairness.” Both times, Romney insisted that it was solely an “envy-oriented” attack on “millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street”:

LAUER: When you said that we already have a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy, I’m curious about the word ‘envy.’ Did you suggest that anyone who questions the policies and practices of Wall Street and financial institutions, anyone who has questions about the distribution of wealth and power in this country, is envious? Is it about jealousy, or fairness?

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.

LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?

ROMNEY: I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

Watch it:

The exchange is indeed shocking in what it reveals. In a time when income inequality is at its worst level since the Great Depression and Americans are increasingly concerned over the shrinking middle class, Romney is insisting that anyone who questions — let alone tries to reform — the unfair advantages of the extremely wealthy or the destructive practices of the financial industry that single-handedly shoved America into a recession is nothing more than “envious” of these people’s success.

Perhaps his answer shouldn’t be so surprising given how myopic the view is from his high perch. Romney is, after all, a millionaire who is still making money from the predatory equity firm while paying little in taxes and owes much of his political viability to Wall Street’s pocketbook. Indeed, he suggested the public office should be the province of rich people. Perhaps he’s just defending his own.

As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent points out, “Romney was twice given a chance to nod in the direction of saying that concerns about these problems have at least some legitimacy to them, that they are about something more than mere envy or class warfare, and that they are deserving of a public debate. And this is the answer he gave.” Fellow candidate Newt Gingrich had another description for Romney’s answer: “baloney.”

Flush with cash as other rivals limped through the summer and fall, the Romney team poured resources into data: Operatives mined reams of consumer information — from the number of purchases voters made at Williams-Sonoma to their range of financial investments — to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters. [...]

Romney’s operatives paired the voter data with several hundred thousand paid and volunteer calls. They knew his sweet spot was among older, higher-income voters — those with annual household incomes of between $75,000 and $150,000 and with upscale interests like gourmet cooking. He was particularly appealing to older women and did best — as they knew from 2008 — among self-identified Republicans.

Indeed, as BuzzFeed points out, Romney gained only 4 percent from voters earning less than $100,000 between 2008 and 2012, but he gained 14 percent from people making more than $100,000 in the same time span.

The fact that Romney relied on the wealthy to win is not surprising. His economic plan is set to deliver a massive $6.6 trillion tax cut to the richest 1 percent and corporations, a cut that is 100 times more than what his plan offers middle-income Americans. Indeed, nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less a year would get “literally nothing” from his plan which — incidentally — actually raise taxes on half of middle-class families with children.

In a time when income inequality is at its worst level since the Great Depression, Americans are increasingly concerned about the shrinking middle-class. If the most Romney cares to do for the middle-class is unknowingly quote a poet who was concerned with income inequality, he’ll need to rely solely on the wealthy vote to get through 2012.

But they’re not quite noble savages, because they’re self-aware. In the wild, they find misfits who safeguard learning, hoarding the books and lore that the dystopias have repressed. The Occupy movement often casts itself in a similar light, as its members “rough it” in parks in the middle of cities as if keeping alive a more earthy, simple, honest way of living; their library tents symbolize their devotion to learning from the past as they forge a better way for the future. Indeed, the library is a synecdoche for the movement itself: in Toronto, protesters chained themselves to theirs as it was about to be removed as part of the camp’s eviction; at Occupy Wall Street, the demolishing of the library has been viewed as a repressive dystopian act.

In the wilderness, the dystopian protagonists also encounter rebels – and not necessarily the same people who read books. Unlike in escapist fantasies such as “Star Wars,” where the rebels unambiguously deserve our support as they fight an evil empire with the light side of the force, the rebels in YA dystopias can be as dangerous as those in power. Often the two are mirror images of one another, led by charismatic but delusional figures who seek to wrest power for themselves by violent means and view the teenage heroes as vehicles for them to do so. In “The Hunger Games,” Katniss becomes an icon for the rebels in the legendary District 13 but ultimately distrusts their humorless and pathologically driven leader, Alma Coin; in “Chaos Walking,” Viola (Todd’s girlfriend and female counterpart) falls in with The Answer, a group of terrorists who are healers by profession but are just as adept at setting off bombs, and wouldn’t blink at blowing her up if it achieved their own ends.

Now obviously, conservatives have their radicals, too. But I tend to think most of these setups tend to have the regime in power be a conservative analogue, whether it’s preserving extreme economic inequality as in The Hunger Games or priests entangled with the ruling hierarchy in The Knife of Never Letting Go. And so for the people who are fighting against those regimes to prove to be terrorists or authoritarians suggests an unfortunate equivalence between liberals and conservatives, from reformers and preservers of the status quo. And I think there’s something inherently conservative (and worrying, given the age of the target audience) about narratives that encourage people not to participate in the system or to believe that there’s nothing they can do to improve their lives and the structures that govern them. If you drop out, you may be able to live your life on your own terms. But at some point, you’ll probably need to be in contact with the outside world. And if you come up for air because you need an abortion, or because you’re being affected by environmental degradation, or the economy’s left you destitute and you haven’t done your part to make sure the rest of the world is responsive to your needs, you might be in for a nasty surprise.

Fortunately, there are alternatives like Tamora Pierce’s books, which read collectively and in chronological order tell the story of the abolition of slavery and the liberalization of society in her fictional kingdom of Tortall. It’s a story about reform, and as a result, it takes a long time: the arc spans more than a hundred years and twenty books. Not a lot of authors are going to commit to something that ambitious, nor should they have to. But opting out isn’t the only way you can make a story fit in two to four books. Sometimes, it’s a matter of a compromised outcome, or one reform at a time.

Payday loan interest rates in the Show Me State average nearly 60 percentage points higher than the rest of the nation, 445 percent to 391 percent. Fed up with the disastrous effect that such predatory lending is having on poorer Missourians, a group of citizens, religious groups and civic organizations are gathering signatures for a proposed November ballot initiative that would restrict payday lending interest rates in the state to 36 percent.

Payday lending companies, ruffled by the prospect of being able to charge a mere 36 percent interest rate, have teamed up to fight the initiative. Two weeks ago, a new group – Stand Up Missouri – emerged, purporting to represent “consumers, businesses, civic groups, and faith-based organizations.” However, a look at their finance records reveals that the group is funded – to the tune of $216,000 – by just seven payday lending corporations, including Tower Loan, Western Shamrock Corporation, and Brundage Management Company. The front group’s CEO and chairman, Tom Hudgins, is the vice president of Western Shamrock Corporation.

In its first two weeks of existence, Stand Up Missouri has already taken an Orwellian approach to the term “payday lending” – they prefer the phrase “traditional installment loan” – and invoked the Civil Rights Era to defend why payday lenders ought to be allowed to gouge consumers. An ad on their homepage currently explains to viewers how payday lenders are just like Dr. King and Civil Rights Era marchers:

AD: You had poor people who followed Dr. King and walked with him hundreds of miles because they believed in civil rights that much. In this day and time, when can we say we’ve seen something like that where people are willing to leave their job to support something that they believe in? We have that statement, “actions speak louder than words,” and that’s why I’m here. That’s why it was important for me to take time off to be here because I believe wholeheartedly in the company that believes in me.”

Stand Up Missouri joins another pro-payday lending group in the state called Missourians for Equal Credit Opportunity, which has used a loophole in campaign finance law to hide whoever or whatever corporation(s) gave $600,000 to combat the initiative.

It’s not difficult to see why payday lenders are fighting the consumer effort so vociferously. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch details just how ubiquitous payday lending has become in Missouri: “In 2010, there were about 1,040 payday loan stores in Missouri, according to the Missouri Division of Finance. Missouri is second only to Tennessee among its neighbors in the number of licensed payday lenders. Some 2.43 million payday loans were made in Missouri in 2010.”

The proposed 36 percent interest rate cap is also not without precedent. Until the mid-1990s, Missouri law restricted lenders to a 28 percent ceiling.

In the United States, the top 1 percent controls roughly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. According to the study, which examined Roman ledgers, previous estimates, imperial edicts, and Biblical passages, Rome’s top 1 percent controlled less than half that at the height of its economic power, as Tim De Chant notes at Per Square Mile:

Their target was the state of the economy when the empire was at its population zenith, around 150 C.E. Schiedel and Friesen estimate that the top 1 percent of Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth, less than half of what America’s top 1 percent control.

Of course, the millions of Romans at the bottom of the empire’s class structure — the conquered and enslaved, the poorest Romans, and the women who had little civic or economic empowerment — would probably disagree with the study’s conclusion. Still, it serves as yet another highlight of how large the income gap in the United States has become over the last three decades.

Gingrich thinks that the real problem is male inequality.

STUDENT: Hi, Speaker, I’m Holly Flynn, a freshman at the college. Two details of your film really stood out to me. One was Phyllis Schlafly’s commentary. And the other was the characterization of women winning World War II as a negative image. So I’d like you to clarify your stance on womens’ rights. And I’d like to know what you’d do to ensure gender equality in the United States. Given that even today, women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar.

GINGRICH: Well, the latter is going to change dramatically in the next generation because more women are going to college than men. And they’re doing better than men and entering professions more than men. In fact, if anything, you’ll be here in fifteen years wondering what we’ll do about men inequality and male unemployment. Because the people who had the deepest decline of income are males who don’t go to college.

Watch it:

There is a case to be made that, in some areas, women are now overtaking men — such as in college attendance. However, Gingrich is wrong to completely dismiss the wider issue of inequality that is keeping women from earning similar wages to their male counterparts. For one, college attendance is not the only factor that determines salaries. Women working in the exact same industries with the exact same jobs continue to be paid less than men, and even women working in the highest-paid jobs continue to earn less than men. And although Gingrich seems to point to the recession as lowering the pay gap between sexes, the pay gap has actually staganted during the poor economy. (HT: YouTube account TheAsianRepublican)

“This is something that no liberal wants to deal with,” Gingrich said. “Core policies of protecting unionization and bureaucratization against children in the poorest neighborhoods, crippling them by putting them in schools that fail has done more to create income inequality in the United States than any other single policy. It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.” [...]

“Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

Watch it, via CNN:

– A strong majority (60 percent) of Americans agree that the country would be better off if the distribution of wealth was more equal, while 39 percent disagree.

– Seven in 10 (70 percent) Americans favor “the Buffett rule,” a proposal to increase the tax rate on Americans earning more than $1 million per year, compared to only 27 percent who oppose it.

– Overall, two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans favor increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10 an hour. Support for raising the minimum wage has remained stable since 2010.

Even a majority of Republicans agree with the Buffett rule, aimed at ensuring that millionaires can’t pay a lower tax rate than middle-class households. The PRRI’s findings are in line with a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 65 percent of Americans say that the government should pursue policies that “try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans.”

Now, the 99 Percent Movement’s influence on the wider political landscape is becoming clear. According to a new poll from the Hill, the majority of likely voters now say “income inequality has become a big problem for the country,” and “majorities across practically all income levels, and all political, philosophical and racial lines agreed that the middle class is being reduced.” Nearly seven in 10 respondents said the current tax system — which a recent Congressional Budget Office report said is partially responsible for income inequality — is “unfair.”

That CBO report showed that average income of the top 1 percent increased 275 percent from 1979 to 2007, while growing by just 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent of earners. The issue has become so salient that even Republican lawmakers are beginning to feel obliged to address it, Politico’s Marin Cogan and Jake Sheman report:

Income inequality, a cause of liberal economists and pundits, is working its way into the discourse of Republicans on Capitol Hill. [...]

So rather than ignore the disparity — and risk looking out of touch — Republicans are acknowledging income inequality. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is discussing it; House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has talked about wealth disparity; and rank-and-file Republicans have started to lace the phrase into talks and interviews.

The move is rather remarkable for GOP lawmakers, who have previously tried to completely disqualify the Occupy protests and stamp out any discussion of wealth distribution or equity as “class warfare” or socialistic.

While critics deride the Occupy Wall Street protests for lacking clear policy goals or accomplishments, if the movement accomplishes nothing beyond fundamentally shifting the political discourse away from trumped up fears about the debt to real issues like inequality and jobs, then it has already succeeded.

And it’s not just protesters who are concerned, as a new poll shows two-thirds of voters think the middle class is shrinking and 55 percent believe income inequality is a big problem for the country.

In response to the increasing attention on income inequality, many Republicans are trying to show they are committed to addressing the problem. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) recently planned a major speech on the subject, but abruptly canceled when he learned the speech would be open to the public. As Politico noted today, income inequality is “working its way into the discourse of Republicans on Capitol Hill,” even though their policy response has been to push the same old tax cuts they always suggest.

During an interview last week on Capitol Hill, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) cast doubt on the seriousness of Republican efforts to fight inequality. DeFazio blasted the GOP for signing onto the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” as all but six House Republicans have done, effectively binding them to the opinions of ATR leader and extreme anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist:

DEFAZIO: They’re saying, you know, unleashing the job creators, protecting their tax loopholes, you know, and their tax breaks, protecting the Bush tax cuts will somehow solve income inequality. Well, we’ve got ten years of experience now of tax cuts that don’t create jobs and they have exacerbated the income inequality of this country. So, they are chained, they are chained to Grover Norquist and they can’t do anything that he doesn’t like so they can’t deal meaningfully with it. [...]

They can pretend, they can change their rhetoric, they’re very good at that. They’re just really in a position with Grover Norquist over there and Wall Street over there. Where are they gonna go?

Watch it:

– Karl Singer