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### On Economic Inequality In America

My biggest concern--indeed, my biggest point of concentration outside of work--is learning the science, history, and nuances of our national and global economies and how we go about fixing the phenomenon of economic inequality. In most political conversations it seems we already have the solution to the ever-widening chasm of inequality figured out, due in no small part to the ever-resonant chanting of our social media brethren. There appears to be a canonical system when it comes to discussing the topic of economic inequality; in plain terms, it seems every piece of literature we stumble across has one or more of the following three ingredients as its base: political biases, high-level data (focusing solely on macro-level statistics), or a poor understanding of the topic at hand.

What do we do about economic inequality? To me, the rational first step needs to be understanding the problem. Yes, America has a growing divide of economic inequality; the upper deciles of society are growing ever richer, and the lowest deciles are stagnating (and have been for some time). Secondly, we need to explore how these changes came about; nobody ought to be content with blaming the wealthy and moving on--it's ignorant and harmful to more tangible discussions.

Certainly, the notion of the ultra-rich is a recognized attribute of American culture--we reward those who create wealth with a system that pays accordingly. Is that, in itself, a bad thing? My answer is no. I'm willing to guess your answer is the same. Those who work with levels of raw determination many magnitudes above our societal median ought to be rewarded for their work--it's a farce to say otherwise. So, then, what remains the issue?<commit_msg>Update 2016-01-26-economic-inequality.md<commit_after>---
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### On Economic Inequality In America

My biggest concern--indeed, my biggest point of concentration outside of work--is learning the science, history, and nuances of our national and global economies and how we go about fixing the phenomenon of economic inequality. In most political conversations it seems we already have the solution to the ever-widening chasm of inequality figured out, due in no small part to the ever-resonant chanting of our social media brethren. There appears to be a canonical system when it comes to discussing the topic of economic inequality; in plain terms, it seems every piece of literature we stumble across has one or more of the following three ingredients as its base: political biases, high-level data (focusing solely on macro-level statistics), or poor understanding.

What do we do about economic inequality? To me, the rational first step needs to be understanding the problem. Yes, America has a growing divide of economic inequality; the upper deciles of society are growing ever richer, and the lowest deciles are stagnating (and have been for some time). Secondly, we need to explore how these changes came about; nobody ought to be content with blaming the wealthy and moving on--it's ignorant and harmful to more tangible discussions.

Certainly, the notion of the ultra-rich is a recognized attribute of American culture--we reward those who create wealth with a system that pays accordingly. Is that, in itself, a bad thing? My answer is no. I'm willing to guess your answer is the same. Those who work with levels of raw determination many magnitudes above our societal median ought to be rewarded for their work--it's a farce to say otherwise. So, then, what remains the issue?
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