Inequality offensive
Economists have measured America’s growing wealth gap in great detail: by income, educational attainment, and in terms of the country’s declining social mobility, among other metrics. At an MIT forum on Tuesday night, however, economists suggested the issue matters for an overarching reason that’s slightly harder to quantify: Inequality, they said, constitutes a threat to America’s values and political system. “If there’s any national religion that we have, it’s the religion of meritocracy, the belief that people get where they end up in life because of hard work and playing by the rules,” said moderator David Autor, professor of economics and associate head of MIT’s Department of Economics. “That’s a very powerful belief system to have … it makes people say, fundamentally, ‘I can accept the outcome I get, because it’s not arbitrary, it reflects some kind of justice.’” By contrast, Autor noted, a decline in opportunities for advancement threatens...