Dealing with inequality
Asking the simplest question amid a sea of statistics about income gaps and metaphors about rising tides and economic ladders, Harvard Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood stumped a session that was called to discuss “The Growing Challenge of Inequality.” “What are we going to do about it?” Ellwood asked at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Thursday. Suppose, he said, a member of Occupy Wall Street came into the session and said, “ ‘I want to change inequality in America.’ What should we do?” A moment of silence greeted the question, and then William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, took the plunge. “The question is: What can we do realistically, given the present economic and political [reality],” he said. “I would love to strengthen the nation’s equalizing institutions … institutions that I think played major roles in the broadly rising economics in all groups.” That includes...
