Our respondents did, in fact, react to our tutorial by increasing their already significant concern about inequality: the tutorial raised the share of respondents who indicated that inequality was a “very serious problem” by over 40 percent.

However, our results also revealed — with one key exception — that support for redistribution increased to a much smaller degree. Our tutorial had only a small effect on support for increasing taxes on millionaires and raising the minimum wage, and no effect on support for other policies that help low-income families, like the earned-income tax credit and food stamps.

Researchers from Columbia, MIT, Harvard and UC-Berkeley conducted a survey of more than 5,000 Americans to figure out how people feel about income inequality, and if they believed income inequality could be addressed through government action. In short: Yes, people believe income inequality in the U.S. is a real issue, but they are unsure if the government can do anything about it, because it was the implementation of government policies that helped fuel income inequality in the first place.

The mission, then, is to figure out policies we can all agree on, like the earned-income tax credit that helps the working poor, which both liberal and conservative lawmakers and every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have supported. Unfortunately, that kind of universal bipartisan support is rare.

Photo: FtCarsonPAO

According to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank that “believes every working person deserves a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, and retirement security” (agreed!), wage inequality has expanded during 2009-2011 economic recovery. Here’s a chart:

The top one percent saw their wages drop dramatically during the recession (see: the riches to rags story in The Queen of Versailles), but have seen gains during the recovery years (see: this follow-up to the Versailles documentary). The bottom 90 percent, on the other hand, has seen nothing but erosion when it comes to their wages. :(

What can economists tell us about the trouble women have advancing in the workplace? Do we really know whether they get the same training or opportunities in the office?

We certainly believe that’s the case. And we do have some evidence. I’ve seen some studies where, even when controlling for measured factors, women will get less training than men. Mentorship has been a long-term issue, especially in male-dominated areas, or areas where the senior people are men. People still tend to identify with younger colleagues of the same sex. So they may be more supportive, encouraging and helpful to young men than they are to young women. And even how it affects women themselves. There have been some studies that suggest, for example — the evidence is a bit mixed — but one of the more interesting ones I saw, where women were randomly assigned to classes, just having a female professor in some of these scientific and technical areas increased the probability that women would go into these areas.

The Atlantic has a good discussion with Francine Blau, a labor economist at Cornell, about why we have not yet reached parity for men and women in the workplace. This particular section here reminds me of what Joyce King Thomas said last month about mentorship (“Starting today, let’s all pick three women to mentor. I’m not just talking to those at the top, but to those in the middle and those scrambling up by their fingernails.”)

In recent income inequality news, the top 1 percent of owners have received 93 percent of income growth in 2010, and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has acknowledged that low interest rates are affecting savers right now, but we’ll all benefit as the economy strengthens. That doesn’t make me feel any less bad about the tiny interest rates I’m seeing in my ING account right now.

There is no good reason why the 1 percent, with their good educations, their ranks of advisers, and their much-vaunted business acumen, should be so misinformed. The 1 percent in generations past often knew better. They knew that there would be no top of the pyramid if there wasn’t a solid base—that their own position was precarious if society itself was unsound. Henry Ford, not remembered as one of history’s softies, understood that the best thing he could do for himself and his company was to pay his workers a decent wage, because he wanted them to work hard and he wanted them to be able to buy his cars. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a purebred patrician, understood that the only way to save an essentially capitalist America was not only to spread the wealth, through taxation and social programs, but to put restraints on capitalism itself, through regulation. Roosevelt and the economist John Maynard Keynes, while reviled by the capitalists, succeeded in saving capitalism from the capitalists. Richard Nixon, known to this day as a manipulative cynic, concluded that social peace and economic stability could best be secured by investment—and invest he did, heavily, in Medicare, Head Start, Social Security, and efforts to clean up the environment. Nixon even floated the idea of a guaranteed annual income.

Vanity Fair has an excerpt of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book about inequality, which argues that rich people need to reduce inequality for the sake of their own selves. It’s also what Elizabeth Warren has basically argued before: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.”

Photo: Shutterstock/Brendan Howard

The wealthiest 2,000 households in NYC took in nearly 1/5 of all income reported in the city. bit.ly/KeNvsK

— Arun Venugopal (@arunNYC) May 21, 2012

See more from the income inequality report from the New York City Comptroller’s Office here.

Most of you have probably heard of TED talks—you know, the ones held at conferences people like to go to so they can listen to speakers like Sheryl Sandberg and Mary Roach present “ideas worth spreading.” The cost to attend one of these conferences can range anywhere from $2,500 to $7,500, according to the registration costs of upcoming conferences. Sometimes, we find the talks interesting, and other times, we find them ineffective. And it’s great that even if you can’t afford to attend a conference, you can watch the videos for free on the TED site.

But, according to The National Journal, not all of the talks make it onto the TED site. 

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”

“We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years,” he said. “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an ecosystemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.”

You can’t find that speech online. TED officials told Hanauer initially they were eager to distribute it. “I want to put this talk out into the world!” one of them wrote him in an e-mail in late April. But early this month they changed course, telling Hanauer that his remarks were too “political” and too controversial for posting.

It’s unfortunate that TED is willing to post polarizing discussions on climate change and birth control, but not income inequality. It’s especially unfortunate because if we’re going to have a legitimate discussion about something like income inequality from the viewpoint of a rich person, it’d be good to have Hanauer’s argument alongside someone like Edward Conard. Thankfully, The National Journal has posted a transcript of Hanauer’s talk here.

Photo: Flickr/Erik Charlton

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 understands that many believe that the U.S. economy currently serves the rich at the expense of everyone else. He contends that this is largely because most Americans don’t know how the economy really works — that the superrich spend only a small portion of their wealth on personal comforts; most of their money is invested in productive businesses that make life better for everyone. “Most citizens are consumers, not investors,” he told me during one of our long, occasionally contentious conversations. “They don’t recognize the benefits to consumers that come from investment.” 

Adam Davidson, a reporter for NPR’s Planet Money, interviewed Edward Conard, a former partner at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped build with Mitt Romney, about his new book which basically argues that America’s growing income inequality is actually a good thing. Davidson is right: I hate this book already. But I will probably read it (from the library!), because it’s necessary to know the other side’s argument, before you form your own. 

Also infuriating:

Conard’s version of the financial crisis ignores much reporting and analysis — including work I’ve done with NPR’s “Planet Money” team — that shows that some of the nation’s largest banks actively manipulated customers and regulators and, sometimes, their own stockholders to profit from dangerous risk. And for many economists, rising inequality can create exactly the wrong outcomes for society over all. Rather than simply serving as an invitation for everybody to engage in potentially beneficial risk-taking, inequality can allow those with wealth to crush new ideas.

I kept raising these questions with Conard, but he repeatedly waved them off. “I don’t want to talk about rent-seeking,” he told me. “When you go off to a third-world country, there’s a dictator who says, ‘I’m giving the telephone franchise to my brother-in-law.’ It’s pretty hard to do that here.” I countered that many economists see rent-seeking in the United States as a much more subtle but still destructive process. If some rich people are able to get and stay rich by messing around with the rules, then those art-history majors will feel as if they have no chance to break into a well-connected, well-protected elite.

If you’re going to argue that income inequality is a good thing, you better have some solid answers prepared when a reporter raises tough questions to you.