Once again, let's give huge hosannas to Up with Chris Hayes for having a conversation you won't see on the corporate media (suck it, David Gregory) and for having enough respect for both the subject and the audience to not try to give it a cursory "both sides" treatment for six minutes before moving onto another topic.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson set out to document the commonalities of struggling nations and hit on a single point with encompasses much of what we see as unrest in the rest of the world and the origins of the uprisings of the labor unions and Occupy protests here: the willful promotion of economic inequality by a small number of economic elites.

Acemoglu and Robinson’s answer is straightforward – it all depends on institutions. Successful nations have good institutions that are “inclusive” and “pluralistic” and create incentives for people to work hard and invest in the future. Unsuccessful states, on the other hand, are characterized by “extractive” or “absolutist” institutions that economically and politically benefit a small group of elites at the expense of everyone else.

I think this quote that Chris Hayes cites from the book is the money quote:

Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.

While Acemoglu and Robinson focused on the developing world, there are clear parallels to the United States. While simultaneously being the wealthiest nation in the world, the US also bears ownership to the fact that one in three Americans lives at or near the poverty level, one in four children suffer from food insecurity and homelessness rates rising in major population centers. Clearly, that wealth is not trickling down, no matter what Milton Friedman theorized.

We see it in the nations trying "austerity" measures, which by and large burden the lower economic ranks significantly by cutting services to them with little to no sacrifice from those at the top of the economic ladder. Like the mitas in Peru, these are systems set up by elites to benefit them and with no protections to the workers. And they become institutionalized, used by whichever party is in power.

And that is once again (my pet meme) where our media fails us (Chris Hayes excepted, naturally). Because this growing inequality is NEVER discussed. These systems that hurt the economically impoverished are still discussed as potential solutions, even though we have historical evidence that they don't work. And never, ever are historical parellels, precedents or successes brought up. Bob Schieffer isn't going to bring up the New Deal works that got Americans working again, instead of tax cuts for the robber barons. David Gregory won't ask Republican strategists about how the Glass Steagall Act protected Americans' savings accounts for decades. There's no way Chris Wallace would point out that lowering the Medicare age eligibility could actually be a way to increase employment and dramatically stimulate the economy.

Happily for us, Acemoglu feels more optimistic about our outlook. We've pulled ourselves out of one great depression, and we can do it again. But it's going to take an uprising within the system to do so.

So, what are the protesters so upset about, really?

Do they have legitimate gripes?

To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes. And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will likely be only the beginning. The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high...read on

Make sure to click through and check out all the graphs and charts.
(h/t Atrios)

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Making Sen$e correspondent Paul Solman reports on the extreme inequality in the U.S. It's now on par with African dictatorships. In a telling moment after interviewing a recent immigrant from Haiti, where she says the American Dream isn't something she feels she'll ever have, Solman says, "The U.S. looks unequal to a Haitian?"

He then looks into a recent study about wealth in the U.S. "The first constant finding," Solman says. "Most Americans don't realize how unequal our country really is."

Yay for non-profit media.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that America's top economists are running around with their hair on fire? (Or whatever passes for it with economists.) Nobel Prize winner Joe Stiglitz in Vanity Fair sounds the alarm about growing economic inequality in America. I wonder if anyone in a position to do something about it is listening?

America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries forworkers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.

Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

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It's been said that the wealthy win because they can always hire half the poor to shoot the other half. Rarely is there a sadder case of this than when it comes to trying to protect the planet that feeds us, clothes us, and generates the only pocket of breathable atmosphere in our solar system.

Because look, say you're a committed environmentalist, your beloved spouse has treatable cancer, and the only way to save his or her life is to take a job clubbing the last baby seal on the beach. That seal is toast. And so is anything or anyone else that stands between your partner and their chemo.

Don't think the greedy jerks who own everything don't know it; they downright count on it to get their way.

Driving down wages, increasing animosity among the lower classes by scapegoating various segments of also-poor people, decreasing the health and safety of working conditions -- these aren't unfortunate side effects of our current economic incentive structures. They are the point, fueling a vicious cycle where more profits flow to the top while workers are too desperate to do anything about it. The effect, as it was recently said, is this:

The great problem we have today in improving our society, in fixing our economy, is that so many people don't want to give up what they have. . . . [W]hat the past 40 years have proven is this: if you lose your job, you're on your own. If you're in your 40s and 50s and you lose a good job, you'll probably never, ever, have a good job ever again. . . .

People know, they know and they are right, that economic change, in our society, could cost them everything. Their job and any prospect of a good job. Their house. Their marriage. Their health care and even their life.

So they grasp tightly to what they have, and everyone fights to make sure that nothing really changes. Each person, with their little or big piece of the pie, fights viciously to keep it whether it's good for society or not. They are right to do so.

The biggest enemy of our environment, therefore, is mass desperation wielded like a billy club in the hands of the extremely wealthy. The following are some ideas on how to both disarm them and take the next steps towards creating a more awesome society to live in.

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