Agree, the facts are the facts. But, what is the solution? Should we do away with "class" (whatever that is), family backgrounds, and inherited wealth?

Of course, those who can are going to help their kids get a good start in life and that means those kids are going to have an advantage. I would not want to change that.

Of course, those who own a business are going to want to bring their children into their business. I would not want to change that.

Of course, those who have accumulated an estate are going to want to leave it to their children. I would not want to change that. The estate tax already puts somewhat of a cap on the intergenerational passing of wealth and I support that tax. All the facts quoted from the post occurred WITH an estate tax in place.

Certainly, we should throw "trickle down" economics in the trash and fix the loopholes in our tax system so that the system favors the maintenance of the middle class. We should improve our education system, particularly as it has to do with access to higher education. (Have you checked out the cost of college lately... absolutely unreasonable even for publicly supported institutions.)

Past that, I think we just have to live with it. Often smarter, more successful parents have smarter, more successful kids, and that's just the way it is. Those kids tend to marry smart, successful people and on it goes. How are we going to change any of that? Declare them a "class" and discriminate against them?

If we were to get rid of trickle down economic policies that prop up wealthy people who don't produce anything of value and we created a truly free market, then there wouldn't be the problems we're facing now.

The first step in creating that free market is to level the playing field, which means no subsidizing large companies. Government money should only be used in areas where the free market cannot do the job well enough or fast enough: the process of developing clean energy, education, health care, police, fire, national defense, and social security. The only way to do that is with strong regulation, part of which would keep corporations from lobbying.

The article seems to want to blame all inequality on: Fixing those things is social engineering to achieve the numbers they deem desirable. It is not a realistic solution.

IAgreed, that would be more fair. But, don't be surprised if the same groups continue to do better than others. Creating an opportunity to be successful is all we should concern ourselves with... who wins the game should be left to the players.

What do you think the so-called Conservatives have been doing??? Social engineering is what government is about. The question is: is the engineering for the richest people, or the majority of people?
If the same exact groups continue to do better, it can't be fair! Many of the people who have done well over the last eight years would be in prison if it were fair.

We can probably all agree on the futility and wrong-headedness of trickle-down economic theories which plainly don't work in a capitalist society any better than Communism did for the USSR, and for the same reason: GREED.

In the first case, a share of wealth entirely disproportionate to the effort of creating it goes to the top where it is not shared as it should be with those who made it possible, and in the other, again, power rests in the hands of too few whose merit did not get them the power they wield, it was their greed for power and ruthlessness that did. Both forms lead to corruption of a system that could work in theory because human nature obviates their merits and they are subverted to personal gain by those at the top.

Having said all that, however, you cannot deny that although we are all created equal under the law, we are not created equally able, nor are we equally intelligent, ambitious, motivated and focused. There is always the merit factor. Pay scales are based to some extent (or should be) on merit, availability of the talent required, and scarcity of those resources. Finding a system that treads equitably between socialism and trickle-down is not a trivial pursuit because while we must award the meritorious, we must also support the workers; the hands and eyes of labor.

True enough, but any system should at least match that of our distant ancestors. Hunter/gatherers were able to make a living working about two to four hours per day. Did they live as long? No, but is our economic system so unable to provide for its people that we need to work at jobs most of us don't like, and for most of our waking moments, just to exist for longer periods of time? And to spend those extra periods as indentured servants: slaves to our jobs, homes, and vehicles, all the while living in fear that some fat cat might pull the rug out from under us so he can buy another mansion/yacht/trophy wife?

A few things need to happen to get us (i.e. the US) back on track.

One important thing is that we need to recognize that money flows upward (defining "up" as the direction that tends toward those who already possess wealth, i.e. the "haves" and "down" as the direction that tends towards those who lack wealth, i.e. the "have nots"), not downward. It must be pumped downward. The reason is simple, and should be fairly obvious. The overwhelming majority of rich people got rich by spending less money than they made. Unfortunately, saving is often a luxury the poor cannot afford. Certainly some people could save, but choose not to, but many people make every attempt to keep their expenses to a minimum and still are barely able to get by. However, those who spend all of their income make larger contributions to the economy (relative to their income) than those who save. Those extra contributions are eventually siphoned off as savings by those who save.

Another important thing that needs to happen is we need to get past the anti-communism/anti-socialism rhetoric of the Cold War. It was BS then and it's BS now. Capitalism isn't the holy grail of economics. Socialism and capitalism each have their relative strengths and weaknesses. As a nation, we need to be able to objectively evaluate when industries better serve people via capitalism and when they better serve people via socialism, and then we need to adopt policies that best serve the people. Mixed economies are proving themselves to be superior to both capitalist and socialist economies. There's a lot more to economics than just supply and demand. We wouldn't want our engineers disregarding things like friction and wind resistance in their designs; why do we readily accept the opinion of economists who disregard important aspects of economics?

Something else we need to do it prioritize education. Somehow US culture has reached a point where people actually pride themselves on their ignorance. Educated people are often pejoratively referred to as elitists. Scientists are often accused of participating in widespread conspiracies (e.g. evolution, global warming) by people far less informed in the subject matter. Cultural perceptions of education and inconvenient educated opinions aside, we need to overhaul our education system. A secondary education should be enough to prepare the typical graduate for a typical job in which they can earn an income sufficient to provide a comfortable life. Currently, it's fairly common to find high school graduates unable to write a coherent paragraph (or even a coherent sentence in too many cases) or unable to perform mathematical operations as simple as long division or adding two fractions with different denominators. These are things that should be mastered long before students leave elementary school. There's no reason high school graduates should not have a basic understanding of calculus. There's no reason high school graduates should not have a thorough understanding of the differences among writing memos, emails, proposals, textual chat entries, etc.

Recently, I had a conversation with a roommate, a Chinese citizen in the US on an education visa. I asked him his opinion regarding why China's economic policy has been so strong in recent years. His answer was simple; the Chinese government adopted mathematically sound economic policies. Perhaps the US could learn something from that.

Absolutely, but while it is related, I think education is a separate issue from our/Wall Street's/Auto industry's economic problems. There are many religious groups who teach their young to read specifically so they can read religious texts. That's wrong, and we shouldn't be educating people so that they can pray at the altar of commercialism either. I believe that people should be able to earn a living even if they're illiterate. Yes, better education should mean better pay, but we tend to look at training as if it were education. That's another huge mistake.

To an extent I agree. However, I think a better educated public would have been generally more resistant to succumbing to the sales tactics used to sell sub-prime mortgages that were only affordable as long as the teaser rates lasted.

(There are other things a better educated population could have prevented, but their arguments would be far too political for this forum.)

Certainly there were other factors, but if the intent is to prevent the current economic crisis from reoccurring in 20-30 years, education is something that must be addressed.

Hmmmm. Good argument for going to school, working hard, and being successful. We should advertise that. :)

Who said the fat cat did? Lots of very undeserving people are very wealthy.

Perhaps in a country where there is a strong correlation between the two.

Well said! Except that hunter-gatherers enjoy better health than farmers, thanks to their leisure and more varied diet. On the other hand, the h/g male death toll in constant low-level warfare is generally huge. On the gripping hand, that is what males are for, we are merely destructive genetic testing devices in the service of female lineages, so who cares.

A case can be made that the Agricultural Revolution was humanity's biggest mistake. It gave us larger populations at the price of backbreaking toil, poor health, the expropriation of the product by the strong and the enslavement of women. And we didn't even escape the wars.

Yes, and there are other differences. Hunter/gatherers didn't have Macs (what would I do?) for example.

My point was only to demonstrate that while we tend to look at individual performance within the system as being the most important factor, it is the performance of the system itself that matters most. Our system has performed poorly.