Income Inequality Impairs the American Dream of Upward Mobility. A Debate

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In the last 30 years, the wages of the top 1 percent have grown by 154 percent, while the wages of the bottom 90 percent have grown by only 17 percent. As the rungs of the economic ladder move further apart, some argue that opportunities to achieve the American dream of upward mobility could disappear, they assert, as the rich grow richer and the wages of the middle class and the poor hardly grow at all. But others consider income inequality a positive development-a feature of a dynamic and robust economy-that, in the end, helps everyone. And income inequality, they add, is irrelevant to upward mobility, which, they note, has remained stable over the past few decades. Is rising income inequality a growing problem that threatens the American dream? Or is it a misleading metric for gauging upward mobility and a sign of the nation's economic health?