I read the piece. What a pile of poop. Anyone who accuses US society of being grossly unequal misses the point. A child of a working class family in the US can become wealthy. This is not the case in countries characterized by extreme wealth on the top and starvation poverty below.
We are only now experiencing middle class compression of socialist European countries, and that only because of the practice of spending more than we bring in at the Fed and State government levels.
Conflating the income of bankers with gang gun violence is an example of pure academic moronism. The suggestion that financial success is criminal vitiates the immorality of criminal conduct by bankers or any other segment of society. We'll see how Jon Corzine and his friends at MF Global who "lost" $1.2 billion make out.
When you drill down the authors' argument is an absurd over simplification - i.e., what is wrong with the financial sector is the lack of shame attached to failure, or 'guessing wrong.' The moral hazard of the losses which follow guessing wrong stands at the heart of the capitalist 'risk' system. The article's substitution for 'shame' with 'moral hazard' is subtle but Soviet.
By this standard, Obama and his enviro-socialist dwarfs should have been pilloried for their corrupt 'bad bets' on Solyndra and SunPower.
The article's point is congruent with the driving force behind the Obama administration, and the Occupy Wall Street losers - sociology or politics which divides a society by class. Socialist Class Warfare Demagoguery.
Nothing good comes from it.
