Income Inequality and Catholic Social Theory

Does CST have anything to add to the debate now going on (raging would be too strong a word) about growing income inequality?  This piece, from yesterday's NYT, reports on the debate:

Economic View

Income Inequality, Writ Larger

By DANIEL GROSS   

INCOME inequality is a hot topic in politics and economics. The rising economic tide is lifting a bunch of yachts, but leaving those in simple boats just bobbing along.

Two professors  — Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley — have found that the share of gross personal income of the top 1 percent of American earners rose to 17.4 percent in 2005 from 8.2 percent in 1980.

Many economists, especially those who find themselves in the Bush administration, argue that the winner-take-all trend is fueled by other, unstoppable trends. After all, globalization, information technology and free trade place a premium on skills and education. “The good news is that most of the inequality reflects an increase in returns to ‘investing in skills’ — workers completing more school, getting more training and acquiring new capabilities,” as Edward P. Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, put it last year.

It takes an optimist to find good news in the fact that the top 1 percent have steadily increased their haul while the other 99 percent haven’t; after all, many more than one in every 100 Americans are investing in skills and education.

[Read the whole piece, here.]