Sam Pizzigati: "Too Much Online, 03 June, 2013"

Last week brought disturbing new stats on our unequal times, and we have them all in this week’s Too Much. Last week, on the cheerier side, also brought insightful new commentaries from three of our era’s top inequality analysts.

You'll find all three pieces below in our New Wisdom on Wealth sidebar. And the three certainly do have new wisdom to offer. David Cay Johnson, for instance, helps us see how low taxes on high incomes give our CEOs an ongoing incentive to line their own pockets “at the expense of the enterprises they run.”

Chuck Collins, for his part, helps us understand another hidden impact of our top-heavy world, the phenomenon sociologists call the “intergenerational transmission of advantage.” Collins walks us through the games the wealthy play to boost their children’s prospects — at the expense of everyone else’s.

Chrystia Freeland, the last of our trio, riffs off recent sexist gabbing by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones to reflect upon our gender and income divides. The more our income gaps widen, Freeland notes, the greater “the social and political sway of those at the very, very top.” Societies that let the rich sway away, she reminds us, invite pathologies we’re only now beginning to understand.