Discussion!

"Rising inequality" is a political and economic truism, and, empirically speaking, is a real phenomenon (though tempered substantially by the recession):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GiniPlots_USA.png
http://www.finfacts.ie/artman/uploads/3/Top-decile-income-share-US-feb192010.jpg
http://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/global-population-and-wealth-shares-2010.png
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/images/milanovic1.gif

I think it's worth thinking carefully about why income and wealth inequality is considered problematic. When issues of equity and resource imbalance are concerned, it's easy to succumb to deeply held but largely implicit notions of justice and "fairness" that, in my view, deserve closer scrutiny than we usually accord them. Clarifying the reasoning behind our instinctive abhorrence of inequality should help us reckon more effectively with the (very real) intellectual contingent that looks neutrally, or even favorably, on income disparities.

So, a question to my co-blogger: why, precisely, should we be concerned about global and intranational inequality? I obviously have my own thoughts on this, but I'd like to bounce them off of your response in service of a larger point.