The American left's mantra of income inequality is hued from identical ideological sources. Raymond Aron's work The Opium of the Intellectuals & The Recovery of the Political demonstrate how the recovery of realism can surmount the eclipse of reason that characterizes the tyrannical return to tribalism.
Several distinct American economists have discerned the way out from the left's incessant call for distributive justice that characterizes the new normal of deficit financing, misplaced macro-prudential hubris and transfer programs.
The reason is this: the cost of consumption is growing, while our productivity is slowing.
For decades, compensation kept pace with productivity; not anymore.
As Dr. James Sherk from Heritage Institute discerned, consumption costs are outpacing productive output. This has more to do with terms of trade, but most of the blame can be found in the political impact of confiscatory taxation, businesses simply leave and ship their goods abroad. U.S. fiscal policy of subsidization contributes to the divergence between compensation and output, for business cannot arrive at any sound, longterm price discovery, not to mention dollar depreciation. It all works against the American worker!
Check out original research http://esoltas.blogspot.com/2015/09/inequality-and-productivity.html
Dr. James Sherk Heritage Foundation research http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivity-and-compensation-growing-together
Wages, Productivity & Inflation http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9057149/wages-productivity-inflation
Brookings Institute: Fall & Rise of Net Capital Share http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/papers/2015/land-prices-evolution-capitals-share
It's easier for dominant political classes to ramp up propaganda than admit that U.S. fiscal, monetary policy contributes to diverging rates of productivity, output and compensation. Remember the reason why EVERY Republic in history failed: the criminalization of political differences.