Income Inequality in the United States

Timothy Noah at Slate Magazine recently started a series on the growing income disparity between the richest percentage and the poorest percentage.  His first post goes into exactly how great this gap has become and why many Americans are ignorant of the problem. By the numbers "the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income" as well as "from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1 percent".  This is despite a productivity increase (among all workers) of "about 20 percent" in the last decade alone.

Here is a great online lecture by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, recorded in April 2005, titled "How Unequal Can America Get Before We Snap?".

At the end of the lecture he unwittingly predicts the Tea Party movement, which is almost prophetic.  This next video is a lecture given by Harvard Law professor, Elizabeth Warren, about the loss of the middle class in America over the past generation.  The first 5:30 is introduction that can be skipped without missing anything important.