Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project. In order to not clog up the front page with lots of re-posts, I'll just mention that I have additional posts out this week that are on a similar topic - one on the abolition of poverty (a similar, but different object from ending inequality), and the other on the establishment of a Fisc - that might interest people here at Economic Populist.

Introduction:

A recent paper by Professor Emmanuel Saez of U.C Berkeley provides further evidence for something that we've sensed already - economic inequality has never been greater in American history. We have finally succeeded in accomplishing that most dubious of accomplishments: we are now officially more unequal, more elitist, and more disproportionally in-egalitarian than the benighted America of 1929.

In 2007, the top 10% of Americans received 50% of the nation's wages. That number, the sheer unreality of the idea that a tiny fraction of the population should have the sheer unmitigated selfishness to claim every other dollar in wages paid out, pales before an even more troubling figure. The top 1% of Americans captured 2/3rds of income growth and 1/2 of economic growth from 2002-2007. At the same time that the rich have gotten even richer, the rest of us have not fared as well - indeed, even before the recession, the average working-age household lost $2000/year of income since the year 2000.

Can this state of affairs continue? And how can we stop it?