But it doesn’t just affect people who are currently in the workforce. It has also contributed to a growing education gap that is affecting low- and middle-income children, according to a Center for American Progress report on income inequality and the middle class. The lowest-achieving students from high-income backgrounds are more likely to obtain a college education than the highest achieving students from low-income backgrounds, the report showed:

Perhaps most stunningly, there is evidence that low-income children who demonstrate aptitude for postsecondary education do not have the same access as children from higher-income backgrounds. The U.S. Department of Education reports that the probability that a top-scoring low-income student completes college is about the same as the probability that a low-scoring high-income student does, while the probability that a top-scoring middle-income student completes college is about as likely as a middle-scoring high-income student.

As income inequality continues to increase, the gap in educational attainment is growing too. The achievement gap between high- and low-income students is 30 to 40 percent larger than it was a generation ago, according to the paper, and income inequality is the primary reason. Areas of the country in which the middle class makes a higher share of income, meanwhile, demonstrate higher scores on achievement tests.

These problems lead to cycles of inequality that persist through generations. As Alan Krueger, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, notes, the future economic mobility of American children is more closely tied to their parents’ income than it is in any other developed country. That means that rising income inequality, and the growing education gap it leads to, is jeopardizing the future for millions of American children before they even have a chance to change it.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, given the fraught political debate, that the most interesting televised take on inequality is snuck in through metaphor. More surprising, though, is that the vehicle is a kids show airing on Nickelodeon. Yet it’s true: The Legend of Korra (the more-than-worthy sequel to the beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender) has been directly channeling the some of most philosophically sophisticated arguments on the morality and politics of redistributing wealth. It’s both a valuable public service and a joy to watch.

Korra is set in a world where some people, referred to as benders, have the ability to manipulate the four elements (water, earth, fire, and air). Benders have huge natural advantages over non-benders: being able to shoot fire out of your hands or freeze people in blocks of ice clearly gives you a decent leg up in a fight. But the show digs a layer deeper than that obvious use, creating a 1920s-esque industrial millieu wherein the social order constructed and maintained on bending abilities. Electricity is generated by firebenders who can manipulate lightning, the main professional sport is a sort of bending boxing, and so on.

The main thematic arc of Korra comes from a clear implication of that premise: benders and non-benders are not each others’ social equals. Because so many important roles are open only to benders, non-benders are systematically disadvantaged, denied access to important sectors of government and the economy. The police force, for example, is made up of specialized earthbenders who can manipulate metal. This state of affairs raises a basic moral question: is it acceptable to structure a society where the luck of being born a bender plays such a huge role in shaping your life chances?

Interestingly, the show makes its villain a champion of the most egalitarian solution to this problem. The masked terrorist Amon leads a shadowy organization called The Equalists, whose is to eliminate bending altogether to create a more equal society. By contrast, the heroine Korra is the bending champion par excellence: she’s The Avatar, the one bender in the world capable of manipulating all four elements. On a children’s show, even one as sophisticated as this one, the message of the good guy/bad guy division is clear: the proponents of equality are in the wrong. Though it’s made clear that Amon has a point, the means by which he goes about “redistributing” talents —taking away benders’ powers—seems unjust.

The debate between Amon and Korra, and the show’s slant on it, could have been ripped from the work of the 20th century’s most influential political philosopher, John Rawls. Rawls is famous, in part, for arguing that the natural distribution of talents is morally arbitrary: just because you’re lucky to be born smarter, faster, or even more predisposed to working hard than your neighbor doesn’t mean you’re entitled to more stuff than she is. Governments, then, have no moral reason to allow more talented individuals to acquire more resources than their less-talented peers. This view, called “luck egalitarianism,” seems to support Amon’s position. Just because benders have natural advantages non-benders doesn’t mean they ought to be allowed to have greater opportunity from the get-go. Indeed, Rawls contemplated a version of Amon’s solution,casting a sympathetic eye to the idea that it would be a good thing to use genetic engineering to improve the lot of those born with natural disadvantages.

But Rawls explicitly rejects Amon’s actual proposal, the idea that we ought to take away talents from individuals in the name of promoting equality. Rawls was, in contrast to his Marxist opponents, a liberal progressive, willing to tolerate a degree of inequality inasmuch as that inequality improved the lot of the poorest people in society. Capitalism was good, Rawls thought, because the limited amount of inequality
it required significantly improved the lives of the poor by generating more wealth. In Korra‘s world, destroying the technology that benders power would almost certainly make the poorest non-benders worse off. If all the firebenders disappeared, Republic City’s power grid would shut off overnight, hurting non-benders that depend on it for heating, refrigeration, and light. Rawls, then, likely
would have taken Korra’s side: benders should be allowed to keep their powers because it’s best for the most vulnerable that they do.

In this case, that solution seems like a bit of a cop-out. We feel like Amon is doing something wrong when (spoiler!) he takes away a famous pro-bending team’s abilities not because it hurts the poor, but because he’s doing an injustice to the team members themselves:

This raises the idea that while significant inequality might be wrong, it might also intrinsically wrong to forcibly take the abilities from people that give rise to some inequalities. Of course, we aren’t confronted with this trade-off in the current American economic climate, as much of our inequality is caused by policy that favors the not-necessarily-so-talented 1%.

Nonetheless, though, America’s inequality problem does force us to grapple with basic moral questions about why and how much redistribution is morally justified. The Legend Of Korra, by setting up a fictional world where radical left and progressive liberal views of economic justice clash, is helping us clarify our most fundamental beliefs on the topic. Not bad for a Saturday morning cartoon.

Zack Beauchamp contributes to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter at @zackbeauchamp.

Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725 percent, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute:

From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.

In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses — as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company’s stock price plummets and jobs are cut.

Workers’ wages aren’t tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011.

As a result, American income inequality has skyrocketed, growing worse than it is in countries like Pakistan and Ivory Coast. Wealth inequality is worse than it was even in Ancient Rome. And, as pay skyrockets and tax rates fall for the richest Americans, the rising inequality has left the bottom 95 percent of Americans saddled with more debt than ever before.

But one of the economists that does, at least in part, share Conard’s views is working for the Romney campaign. Glenn Hubbard, an economist and top Romney economic adviser, takes Conard’s broad economic ideas “seriously,” the Times reports:

Glenn Hubbard, a prominent economist and one of Romney’s chief economic advisers, takes his ideas seriously. “He doesn’t have the blinders of a model-based view of the world, which is an advantage and a disadvantage,” Hubbard told me.

That Hubbard takes Conard’s economic ideas seriously shouldn’t be surprising. Throughout the campaign, Romney has proposed many of the same failed economic policies this type of worldview promotes, focusing on tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that he insists will boost growth for the middle and lower classes, even if they have failed to do so before.

Romney shares Conard’s “beliefs about innovation and growth and responsible risk-taking” only on a broad level, Hubbard told the Times. That should be disturbing, though, given that Conard was arguing for more income inequality precisely to promote innovation and growth. Romney himself has shrugged off discussions about income inequality, saying he is “not concerned with the very poor” and that the topic should only be discussed in “quiet rooms.”

That inequality has crushed the middle class and has perilous consequences for the American economy. It is also contributing to another problem: rising debt inequality. As income inequality has risen, the bottom 95 percent of Americans have fallen deeper into debt over the last three decades, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The top five percent, meanwhile, have seen their personal debt reduced, CNN Money reports:

In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings.

The bottom 95% had incomes of roughly $160,000 or less in 2007, including capital gains.

And then there’s the top 5%. Their debt-to-income level actually fell during the same period, from 76 cents of debt for every dollar earned in 1983, to just 64 cents in 2007.

The contributors to rising income and debt inequality are clear — for the richest Americans, incomes are rising rapidly while tax rates have fallen to historic lows. The rest, however, are increasingly burdened by student loan debt as the cost of college soars, mortgage debt as the prices on their homes have plummeted, and credit card debt as they’ve tried to keep their head above water despite stagnant wages and rising unemployment.

And just as rising income inequality has hampered economic growth, rising debt inequality will threaten the nation’s future, experts say. Both times America had similar levels of debt inequality — in the 1920s and 2000s — crippling financial crises followed. And though the amount of debt held by the bottom 95 percent has shrunk since the end of the recession, that’s largely due to foreclosure and bankruptcy and shouldn’t be taken as a positive sign. “We’re still in similar levels of vulnerability as we were in 2008,” Michael Kumhoff, the report’s author, told CNN.

That income inequality is crushing the middle class and its political power. But don’t tell that to Edward Conard, a top donor to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney who gained notoriety during the campaign as a million-dollar mystery donor who set up a shell company to shield his identity. Conard, a former director at the Romney-founded Bain Capital, is working on a new book in which he argues that income inequality is a good thing, and what the U.S. really needs is more of it, the New York Times’ Adam Davidson reports:

Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich’s role in our society. “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year.

Conard instead argues that income inequality helps everyone because investors grow wealthy by creating products that benefit the 99 percent. Though that is certainly true to an extent, Conard’s line of thinking leads to the supply-side policies that are proven failures at “growing the pie” for everyone. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, for instance, were supposed to create jobs and spark economic growth for everyone. They did neither, instead saddling the nation with unsustainable debt and deficits that Republicans are now using to justify massive budget cuts to programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes.

And while investors like Conard made luxuries available to some Americans, they also bankrupted companies and left workers without jobs, pensions, or health care. Bain Capital, in fact, made billions of dollars for people like Romney and Conard while bankrupting nearly a quarter of the companies in which it invested.

Further, Conard believes the financial industry — the same financial industry that sold “shitty deals” and purposely exploited consumers — isn’t to blame for the financial crisis. Instead, it was investors who created an “old-fashioned run on the bank” that created the crisis. That’s a view that, as Davidson notes, “is not shared by many analysts.” It is, however, a view that is shared by Conard’s favorite presidential candidate, who has admitted that he is “not concerned with the very poor” and has promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that aimed at preventing another such crisis.

Today, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker — co-author of Winner-Take-All Politics — sat down with ThinkProgress, to give us his thoughts on the subject. Hacker explained that, as the wealthy accumulate more resources, they will be able to “shape policy in ways that benefit them,” which leads to a vicious cycle of increasing wealth and increasing power:

Obviously, I am concerned about whether inequality hurts our overall economic growth, and in particular whether inequality undermines the ability of middle-class incomes to grow because the distribution of growth matters, as well as the level of growth. But to me the biggest issue is that, as we’ve seen this massive increase in the share of national income going to the very rich, those at the top have also been able to use that, those resources and the influence that comes with them, to shape policy in ways that benefit them…They push for policies that benefit those at the top and then in turn that further increases the income and sway of those at the top.

Watch it:

Hacker pointed to the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the financial deregulation of the 1990s as outcomes of wealthy individuals exerting undue influence over the political system, using Sandy Weill, Citigroup’s former chairman, as an example.

“Sandy Weill was not some kind of stand-alone entrepreneur who innovated his way to prosperity. He was a guy who was at the top of one of the nation’s most powerful institutions, and then pushed, aggressively — with the support, it should be said, of a lot of Democrats — for changing this Depression-era banking law [separating commercial and investment banking],” Hacker said. This change allowed Citigroup to become one of the biggest banks in the nation, engaging in aggressively risky trading. Of course, Citigroup then crashed and was bailed out in 2008.

“The point is that those at the top are seeking, as are most businessmen and executives, they are seeking higher returns. But they don’t only get higher returns through business ingenuity and savvy competition in the market, but also through reshaping public policy,” Hacker said.

While the winner’s names are being kept private, it turns out the three of them work in Maryland’s public education system as an elementary school teacher, a special education teacher, and an administrative assistant—and all of them work second jobs as well. They do not work in the same school, but know each other from work, and each contributed $20 to go in on tickets as a pool. They will take home $35 million after taxes, and according to Martino, plan to purchase homes, travel in Europe, and pay for their children’s college educations. And, in a nice little rebuke to ugly sentiments that paint public school teachers and public servants as lazy, Martino said they plan to keep teaching.

There is something quite nice about the idea that the MegaMillions will, at least in one state, enrich people of previously modest means. But that story’s only heartwarming in the first place because we don’t pay teachers enough so that they don’t need to take second jobs. It’s bittersweet that chance is making up for our failures of policy.

We found that employed husbands in traditional marriages, compared to those in modern marriages, tend to (a) view the presence of women in the workplace unfavorably, (b) perceive that organizations with higher numbers of female employees are operating less smoothly, (c) find organizations with female leaders as relatively unattractive, and (d) deny, more frequently, qualified female employees opportunities for promotion. The consistent pattern of results found across multiple studies employing multiple methods and samples demonstrates the robustness of the findings.

By insisting on staying the breadwinners for their families, men seem to also be subconsciously buying into the idea that their wives shouldn’t work. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2010 (as cited in the study), there are more than 11 million men in such arrangements, contributing to a culture opposed to women working. The study suggests that these men might be characterized as “benevolent sexists,” but clarifies they are not likely to be overtly hostile towards women.

As Jason Stanford points out at the Huffington Post, this impediment to the gender revolution has significant implications for the 2012 election, with women under 50 “fleeing Romney and supporting Obama” as the Republicans continue to wage a war on women when it comes to healthcare. More than anything, the study proves that equality under the law does not automatically translate to equity in society, such that women are still subjected to the cultural attitudes of the past. Affirmative action, equal pay, and simply allowing the voices of women to be part of conversations about their own lives are essential commitments the men who dominate positions of power must make to create a society that is truly fair to women.

Parsing census data, Bass found that the six jobs with the largest gender gap in 2010 were insurance agents, managers, financial clerks, securities sales agents, personal financial advisers, other financial specialists — all in “the Wall Street-heavy financial sector”:

The financial sector pays women in the six major jobs with the biggest salary gap from 55 to 62 cents for every $1 made by men, according to the census. Female bank tellers, with a median salary of $23,695, came closest to narrowing the gap in the industry, pulling down 96 cents for every $1 earned.

One reason female professionals make less money in the financial sector is that they tend to wind up in lower-paying positions such as in public finance rather than on trading desks, said Louise Marie Roth, a University of Arizona sociologist and author of “Selling Women Short: Gender and Money on Wall Street.”

Women often simply don’t know how much they’re being underpaid because a large percentage of Wall Street salaries are based on bonuses that are kept secret, she said.

The gap is hardly confined to the financial sector — wide disparities exist in many other high-education sectors, such as among doctors and lawyers — but it’s notable that all six of the job categories with the highest discrepancy are in a single sector.

Bass notes that “women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine,” where women make $1.02 for every dollar men make.

The movement turned six months old last Saturday, and a closer look at its record of achievement reveals that it has done more than spark conversation around Wall Street’s watercoolers. Occupy groups have shifted the national debate on taxes and inequality, helped homeowners stay in their homes, forced major policy issues to the forefront of debate at the state and federal level, and gotten the attention of the institutions they’ve challenged most forcefully. With that in mind, ThinkProgress compiled a brief list of Occupy Wall Street’s accomplishments over its first six months:

Income Inequality: The 99 Percent movement refocused America’s political debate, forcing news outlets and eventually politicians to focus on rising income inequality. While debt and deficits were the primary focus of the media before the movement started, their attention after the movement began shifted to jobs, Wall Street, and unemployment. By the end of October, even Republicans were talking about income inequality, and a week later, Time Magazine devoted its cover to the topic, asking, “Can you still move up in America?”

Occupy Our Homes: The movement has drawn attention to many of the predatory, discriminatory, and fraudulent practices perpetrated by banks during the foreclosure crisis, and across the country, Occupy groups, religious leaders, and community organizations have helped homeowners prevent wrongful foreclosures on their homes. Activists in Detroit are working to save their fifth home, and similar actions have taken place in cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Atlanta. The movement has drawn so much attention that local political leaders and even members of Congress have stepped in to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

Move Your Money: On Bank Transfer Day, activists helped more than 40,000 Americans move their money from large banks to credit unions, and more than 650,000 switched to credit unions last October. Religious groups have taken up the cause as well, moving $55 million before Thanksgiving. This year, a San Francisco interfaith group moved $10 million from Wells Fargo and other groups marked Lent by moving more money from Wall Street. As a result, analysts say the nation’s 10 biggest banks could lose $185 billion in customer deposits this year “due to customer defections.”

Fighting For Positive Policies: Occupy groups have pushed for positive policy outcomes at both the state and federal levels. Occupy The SEC submitted a 325-page comment letter on the Volcker Rule, a regulation to rein in big banks. Pressure from protesters forced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to reverse his opposition to a millionaire’s tax, and activists fought Indiana Republicans’ union-busting “right-to-work” law, and have pushed big banks to stop financing destructive environmental practices like mountaintop removal mining in coal states.

Though many of the camps across the country have been disbanded, the 99 Percent Movement isn’t going away. Organizers have continued fighting at the state level, pushing back against banks on fraudulent foreclosures and other issues, and have now turned their attention to the 2012 presidential elections. Movement leaders in New York, meanwhile, are developing high-tech ways to organize protests and keep the movement going. Occupy is starting to assert a political influence, pushing multiple candidates and even running for office themselves — in both Maine and Pennsylvania, former Occupy activists are running for public office.

“It’s changed the language,” one protester told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about. … And that’s the start of change.”

Last week, ThinkProgress reported studies by political science professors Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal that show House Republicans are largely responsible for the ideological extremism that has occurred over the last 30 years in Congress. Another study by Poole, Rosenthal, and others finds that as the proportion of income made by the top 1 percent has increased, members in the House have become more “polarized.”

Combining the two studies, meanwhile, shows that as the income of the 1 percent rises, Republicans become more polarized by moving further to the extreme right. The data sets affirm what we already know: the GOP is beholden to the interests of the 1 percent.

Poole and his colleagues explain this phenomenon by proposing that the top 1 percent tend to be highly partisan. As the income for the 1 percent rises, their campaign contributions become more partisan as well. This polarized campaign-giving has clearly contributed to the ideological extremism of the GOP, while the same type of donations have made only a negligible difference in the Democratic Party’s ideology.

Yet Republicans continue to ignore that America is now more unequal than Iran, Uganda, the Ivory Coast, and even Ancient Rome. And more to the point, as the income of the top 1 percent has seen a 275 percent increase from 1978 to 2007 (compared to a mere 18 percent increase for the bottom 20 percent), Rick Santorum says he is “for income inequality” and Mitt Romney attacks people who raise these facts as engaging in the “bitter politics of envy.”

But Coriolanus is a striking illustration of Shakespeare’s ability to fill whatever space his words are set in. It’s hard to imagine another author who could write a scene of a Roman mother shaming her son into refraining from sacking his home city in an act of poisonous vengeance that would play as well in modern winter coats as it does in togas. And it’s striking to see one of his plays come alive, so vividly transposed to our own time, precisely at the moment that we seem to need it.

In the opening scene of the movie, a group of conspirators come together in a dingy apartment in a bad neighborhood. The First Citizen asks the others, in preparation for a march on grain stores held by the government, “You are all resolved rather to die than to famish?” They could be the General Assembly at an Occupy encampment (the movement could use their graphic design skills, to be sure). The First Citizen’s declaration of Rome’s elite that “They ne’er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there’s all the love they bear us,” is as perfect an articulation of the pains of rising income inequality today as it was when Shakespeare wrote it, and in the time that he imagined those words spoken.

The contempt the citizens meet with when they confront Caius Martius—the Roman general who, like many Republicans today appears to believe that the military are the only people who deserve a social safety net—is awfully familiar as well. “What’s the matter, you dissentious rogues / That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, / Make yourselves scabs?” Martius spits at them. It’s hard not to imagine that America’s beseiged 1 percenters wish they could summon his eloquence in their disdain, though they might stop short at Martius’s diatrabe against popular government, his complaint that by trying to gain the consent of the citizens “we debase / The nature of our seats, and make the rabble / Call our cares fears; which will in time
Break ope the locks o’ the senate and bring in / The crows to peck the eagles.”

And the movie reminded me of something I think at least modern Shakespeare adaptations have in common that’s quite interesting: they’ve redefined banishment as a retreat to poverty. Banishment’s a hard concept in the modern era—as we’ve filled in the land, it’s harder to imagine what it would be like to be cast out of a city state without easy access to the kind of economic, social, or cultural life you once enjoyed within its walls. And it’s also difficult to imagine getting large numbers of people on board with shunning an individual and casting that curse down the years to disadvantage his children as well.

But I think both Coriolanus and Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Romeo + Juliet did something fascinating in their depictions of exile: they made Martius and Romeo poor. When Romeo leaves Verona and ends up living in an isolated trailer: it’s ultimately a poverty of information that kills him when he rushes back to kill himself at what he believes is Julie’ts grave. After the people turn on him and he’s banished from Rome, Martius goes homeless, sleeping rough, hitching rides, growing out his hair and beard, and ultimately stalking his great enemy, Aufidius, to his war council. When Aufidius accepts Martius’s allegiance, and shaving his head, welcomes him back into citizenship, it’s a moment so charged, it’s almost erotic. The nature of our punishments may change. But Shakespeare’s words still have the heft and magnitude to express what exile, what inequality, what hunger mean to us across the years.

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.”