Attention: Brendan Kiley, that top-most link to "New York Times" directs to a Slog admin page.

So, über wealthy overlords, here's a pop history quiz for you: which is cheaper, tolerating economic and political policies that allow a large majority of the population to enjoy a decent life (even at the expense of relentlessly maximizing the efficient accumulation of wealth) or violent revolution?

Go ahead and hit Wikipedia, I suggest starting with "France" and "1789".

Yep, it's pretty clear that we are in big trouble and there is no sense of urgency as we go further into the Laissez Faire rabbit hole.

I'm tellin' ya man, to take the power of their hands, we gotta create new types of money that don't work on the basis of "positive interest". That is the design-feature which enables the constant "trickle up", as money "naturally" accretes towards concentrations of money, via interest.

...OUT of their hands.

And no, I don't mean "Bitcoin".

@ 1. Thanks. Fixed.

Since when has it been "a long-held tenet of free market capitalism" that "inequality will eventually stabilize and subside on its own"? Advocates for freer markets, myself included, have argued that inequality is irrelevant, or exaggerated, or that progressive proposals to address it are unjust, or misguided, or counterproductive, or worse than the disease they purport to cure. But can't recall any of us claiming that some market dynamic will inevitably result in lower inequality in the long run. (Unless by long run you mean the end of the solar system, in which case we will all be equally dead.)

One of the great wealth equalizers is The City.

Manhattan is NYC's expensive wealth sink.

You gotta pay to play...with the Big Boys.

Unfortunately, Seattle is too cheap.

You can live there without spending the hoard and pretend to be just another little 'ol folk.

That is the problem.

Interest income is not taxed at a high enough level.
Start there.

@7
Are you of the Wrights that own the Space Needle?

Having a system that raises enough revenue to maintain a healthy, happy, well-educated workforce and an efficient infrastructure is essential to our economic competitiveness. When everyone is involved and invested in our economy, even the wealthy benefit.

Trying to keep it all to oneself only works for a while, then the whole system deteriorates.

Thank you.

As I said before with respect to the minimum wage increase, if you aren't focused on dispersing the massive concentration of wealth at the top, you are just chasing your tail. (And Tom Douglas isn't the top, he's peanuts.)

From a policy perspective, all we'd have to do is raise taxes on capital gains and inheritance and shore up loop holes to where they were 50 years ago. What's missing is the political will. I fear it will take a much more serious economic crisis to generate that will.

@12, A political will weakened by the 1% plutocrats buying off the 3 branches of government and a police state apparatus serving the 1% ready and willing to crush opposition, e.g, Occupy.

Piketty's book seems amazing but I wonder about the focus on nation-state parameters. hundreds of millions of Chinamen have moved above the global misery line. call center workers in the Philippines and India are paid wages. global inequality might be adjusting differently than the various national inequalities

capital investment is supposed to rise quite a bit this year, in the US. the quit rate is rising, a bit. lower unemployment should have a nice effect on inequality. progressive taxes seem politically difficult, to me. job creation, which would prompt higher wages and inflation to soothe financing costs for existing debt, seems easier to pull off. open lil daycares and public schools everywhere and staff them to the gills with waged and semi-pro staff

a giant part of the increase in capital values is the higher price of non-agricultural land. we all want to live in the city and space is limited. to reduce inequality we should try to relax political limits on available space