>> how deeply does the you income gap affect your every day life? >> our digital producer is bringing you live feed >> how deeply does the you income gap affect your every day life? >> our digital producer is bringing you live feed >> it is the size of the gap,

the numbers are stunning. our producer tweeted out the c.o. to average pay worker ratio was 20-1 back in the day, today 273-1. steve replies who cares, what your c.e.o. makes has no difference to address vaning your career. it's like twenties% owns 80% of the wealth. it's up to the american people to insist our legislatures do something about this problem. matthew says what purpose does an unfettered economy serve. >> when it comes to the unequal distribution of wealth, president obama calls income inequality the defining challenge of our time. >> since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but

most of that growth has flowed to a fortunate few. the top 10% no longer takes in one third of hour income, it now takes half whereas in the past, the average c.e.o. made 20 to 30 times the income of the having a worker, today he makes 273 times more. >> what's driving america's wealth and income gab and why does it matter? joining us to answer those questions and i guarantee you many more is policy analyst as r. street institute which supports free market and limited government. ronald is the director of the program on justice and peace at gorge town university and derek hamilton from the new school in new york. thanks to all of you for joining us. lori, explain the difference between wealth inequality and income inequality.

>> income inequality one get your paycheck and it adds up to your income over the year. we know there's in equality between a c.e.o. and a worker at mcdonald's, wealth, your house, stocks, car, bonds, anything you have in your financial portfolio that you can use to work for you. as the wealth inequality is far larger than income because the people at the top have more wealth and their wealth continues to work for them a, where the middle class, their wealth tend to be in their home and cars and the the lower tends to have no accumulation at all. >> does one matter more than the other? >> to an extent, i think that wealth inequality can be a bigger problem particularly when as you see the size of government grow, people who have wealth continue to work for them continue to lobby the system,

they have access that perhaps people at the bottom don't. also at the bottom when you don't have access to pass on to your children, it can be hard to pass on to your children with the state of our education system, it can be hard to guarantee the type of opportunity that we he traditionally think exists in america. wealth inequality can i think be a bigger problem. >> randall is wealth inequality something that gross over time? >> it certainly seems to be growing over time. the gap between the rich and poor seems to be increasing and more importantly in some way, the strata are hardening, so where you tend to be born in that framework carries with you over time. wealth inequality is a broader construct than income inequality but adds in factors of health and education that factors in the course of your lifetime. >> our community has tweets, tom says the performance over the

last 30 years shows you they can't be trusted. jordan says our government does more for governments and banks than actual humans we tend to represent. one says the u.s. has great wasn't inequality along with disparity in health and education. these are the facts. >> when the gaps increase in income and power. civilization usually collapses upon itself. what are the detrimental impacts on u.s. quality of life. >> detrimental impacts on quality of life and living? some of the things have been hit on already, which is wealth is a primary indicator of one's well being. education, health, we often think of wealth as an outcome, but it's an input variable into everybody's living standards in virtually every indicator,

education, health, political process. if you're confronted with an expensive legal system, no matter what, you pretty much are going to finance that out of wealth if it's an expensive endeavor. >> lori, if the gap continues at this trajectory, does the top get helper, the bottom heavier and the middle class disappear? >> so it's hard to predigit. i mean, economies ebb and flow, right. there's been periods where the gap continues to grow and then you have, sort of the, you know, 1950's and 1960's where things collapsed back in. if it were to continue on the trajectory that it's on, sure, it could become problematic, but i think it's hard to say this is definitely where we're going, will always be going, it's become scientists and politician made this dire prediction.

we make sure we guarantee actions to opportunity. wealth inequality will always exist. people will have wealth, and it will be distributed in an uneven way. we could even the pie and people will do difference things with it. wealth one #-gs the very second day will exist. the question isn't isn't how much wealth inequality we have, it's where is it coming from, is it keeping people from accessing dreams and becoming where they want to come. given the wealth changes over time. >> what troubles you most? >> i think the most problematic is that it is -- i do think we've hit a point that it is where it is easier for people who have wealth, who have actions to continue that wealth and access. i agree really with the last tweet you read which is that we do favor sort of a corporate

plutocracy, to the extent that people are being locked out in favor of the already rich, that can be problematic if we're keeping people from having access at the bottom, because that really is the american dream. when we give money to corporations that and don't invest in education reform, that is a problem, because we have a failing education system. it doesn't have to be a problem while wealth inequality exists. >> this is something likely cyclical and economists don't agree, how you do we measure it? is it a snapshot, something that's looked at over a period of time. how do we do it? >> you have to look at these things over time. it is true that it's enormously difficult to predict. the salient point is that in an equal opportunity system, we would like to think that there is a level playing field. increasingly, wealth seems to be skewing the playing field. it tends to harden and

perpetuate itself. that's not healthy for a society or individuals that live in that society. increasingly it does seem to be the case that we're manifesting a 2-tiered society where those who can pay for better services and quality of life do so and then there's the rest of us. the idea that some how the middle class is still vibrant the way it was a generation ago is something that needs to be seriously reconsidered. >> i think we're kind of missing the point, that wealth itself provides opportunity. lori made a point about we want a society to give people opportunity. the indicator is indeed wealth, more so than education. wealth probably predicts education more than education predicts wealth. >> so i agree with you that wealth in and of itself is a great predictor of who will be successful. certainly statistics show that children born into wealthy households tend to do better

over their life times. i don't think it's safe to say at all if you were born without wealth that you have no hope. i mean, like i personally was born without a lot of wealth from a sort of struggling rural community and ever managed to do fine poor myself. obviously i'm not trying to use myself as an example of one. there's still access to the american dream, but we have to be cognizant of the ways we have locked people out and what we can do to rectify that situation in the future. >> this whole concept of sustainability and access, be they say: >> after the break, the role of race and whether government

should play a part in reducing wealth and income inequality.

he wanted to cut the growth in cost of living adjustments and others that felt that was the wrong way to go to start to cut entitlements or at least slow the growth of entitlements. both of them came to a neutral, compromised ground. this is a compromise of the sort that people have been asking for for quite some time. the bottom line here, those conservative objections are getting some traction, but the betting is now this evening that this is going to pass the house of representatives on thursday and go to the senate the next week and end up on the president's desk, joie. >> mike, thanks for being with us. we'll follow up. ahead. the international space station marks 15 years. are we getting enough bang for our buck, or is it just taking up space? get it?

>> an al jazeera america exclusive... former president jimmy carter reflects on the life and legacy of nelson mandela. >> that spirit of nelson mandela is embedded deeply in the heart and soul of the south africans... >> they worked side by side for freedom, now president carter talks about mandela's global impact. a revealing interview you won't see anywhere else. >> i've never heard him say, that he was grateful to the united states... >> talk to al jazeera with jimmy carter only on al jazeera america >> we're talking about wealth and income inequality in america. one of the latest viral you tube videos breaks down wealth and inequality. it's gotten more than 13 million views. >> ignore the ideal for a molt. here's what we think it is again, and here is the actual distribution, shockingly skewed.

not only do the bottom 20% and next 20%, the bottom 40% of americans barely have any of the wealth. i mean it's hard to even see them on the chart, but the top 1% has more of the country's wealth than nine out of 10 americans believe the entire top 20% should have. mind-blowing. >> so randall, what's interesting to me here is less than half of americans, only 42% think income inequality has increased in the last decade, but in 2012, the gop was the widest since the 1920's. why do you think americans don't people what the data reflects. >> those are very sobering statistics to consider. i think some of it is due to a false consciousness as one of the comments earlier said there seems to be a sense that most people are solidly in the middle class. there's a self perpetuating illusion to that. we all imagine ourselves to be

upstanding upwardly mobile people with possibilities ahead of us. in reality, i think there's a profound sense of vulnerability that comes with wealth inequality and more closely reassembles the poor in terms of being one paycheck away from homelessness, one health crisis away from the bankruptcy. these are profound issues and it's the illusion of being upstanding and solid that perhaps keeps things the way they are rather than more aggressive avenues towards reform. >> derick, what role if any do you think that race plays in terms of this wealth and income gap in america. >> race plays a huge role. we can simply look at the race kaspars in wealth and that will itself explain it. i'll try to cite it. before the great recession, we found the typical black household had a dime in wealth for every typical white house hold. after the great recession, it

got worse. now the typical black household has about a nickel for every color of wealth as the typical white house hold. the wealth gap represents $100,000 with the typical black household having below $6,000 in wealth. you can imagine what $6,000 in wealth can provide for you. >> we have a lot of community feedback, especially about this, who this is affecting in the class and racial component: >> i want to get this video comment from air ran. >> it isn't as much about race

as it is the class you are born into and resources available to bettering one's past. in the free market, if people don't have money to better themselves, they get stuck. the free market doesn't provide handouts and when they do, people call these unamerican or even socialist. >> another sobering stat here, the wealth gap triple between blacks and whites in the past 25 years, do you believe there has been a systemic contribution of race toward it? >> i think particularly when it comes to wealth inequality as opposed to income inequality, race issues play into it. for a very long tile, we did the horrible thing of locking out an entire race from accumulating wealth. obviously since it can be generational, if you do not have access to that, the effects will be long standing. i do think that to insinuate that then a free market, like

the free market the cause would be a bit problematic given that it was more of a societal and government enforced policy that created that, and when it comes to actual solutions, too, you can look at town after town where a government-based solution has not done anything. statistics, you're right even in the last couple of decades have got worse as we try more and more policies to eliminate the problem. we did do an injustice by locking people out of a market and are seeing the effects of that today, i think. >> randall, how much of a gap is acceptable, because it seems there has to be some sort of a gap to provide incentive. >> i don't think we're have going to see perfect equality nor should we. that would be infeasible and boring and not productive in a healthy dynamic society. certainly the gap over time, you would think should be shrinking rather than widening.

i think that's why president obama stepped up retoreically at least and one of the better speeches he's given in years and put this issue squarely before us as a generational challenge that we have to reign this in. we have to close that gap and make it more feasible for people to compete as rough equals. we can't remediate everything prom the past but can take measures through market mechanisms and governmental and through the workers themselves to demand a more level playing field so we can have that engine of competition that supposedly creates that rising tide that lifts everyone up. >> randall, i would disagree, i think when it comes to race, there are a lot of injustice to overcome and we should want to see the wealth gap shrinking rather than widening. when it comes to the economy as a whole, taking race out, i don't know that we should necessarily expect at any point in time to see gaps widening or closing or should have a certain expectation, because there are changing conditions and a lot of

that is due to good things and our technological change and things that drive us forward. the question should be what is driving that if it is widening, why is it widening, is it because of a policy that we're causing to happen to people or is it sort of a natural thing to happens. if it is, what can we do to help people get through and overcome this problem. just to assume that because it is going in one direction, that is necessarily wrong i think is a wrong way to look at it. we should look at the causes. >> i don't think there is anything natural about it. i think it's a set of choices entirely artificial in many ways and it becomes self perpetuating. that's really the issue is that we're allowing a class of wealthy people to write the rules to their own benefit, and to the exclusion of everyone else. i don't think that that is healthy. we certainly don't have a free market in place. we give enormous subsidies to corporations and all sorts of giveaways through tax loopholes and no big contacts.

if we want to talk about having a free market and no loopholes, that is an interesting conversation we could have. >> that i would completely agree with. >> there is a lot lori has said that is correct especially describing racial inequality. the same narrative she made about structures, government complicit structure that is led to this large disparities in wealth across race are intergenerational are also explanatory of how we generated a white middle class in terms of wealth. it was government policy that generated that. likewise, government policy is leading to the greater disparities more broadly beyond race. >> lisa, the community's kind of responding to what randall was saying, the system, the deck was stacked against them, the system was rigged. on twitter:

>> we talked broadly about who should tackle wealth and inequality. should there be policies or initiatives that would or could close the gap between the haves and have notes. tweet us your thoughts. here's a look at other trending stories.

>> start with one issue education... gun controtñ

>> welcome back. that we're talking about wealth and income inequality, the problems it presents, particularly for the middle class. derick, you're a fan of government intervention to fix

the problem. what's your practical proposal? >> i have been talking about with my colleagues for quite a while, but i wanted before i even go into it, a lot of what we've been talking about is summed up in the definition of wealth. wealth is a stock of all your assets as opposed to income as a flow. if we really want to address wealth inequality, the market is not going to solve that. the airporter generational nature of it and stock nature of it is one where you need to intervene to address. the more you have to begin with, the more you have to accumulate. baby bonds are child trust accounts created at birth progressively designed so if you're born into the wealth poor family, you'll get the largest bond at birth and if you're born into the high wealth families, a smaller bond. when you become an adult, it's used as seed money to give you

opportunity and economic security to invest in some wealth building and endeavor, like purchasing a home, starting a business. if we truly want to have a capitalist system where people's efforts are rewarded, both conservative, liberals, democrats, republicans should all agree that we have an opportunity to have a stake in this and baby bonds is the answer, because it gives people seed money so they can have the fruits of their efforts rewarded. >> lori, in 1889, the gospel of wealth was created saying it's our responsibility as the most wealthy americans to redistribute our surplus to shrink the wealth gap. all the captains of industry signed on and funded schools and universities and museums and galleries, which still benefit us today. what has happened to that culture of philanthropy. does it stillist? >> it does. it's interesting to look at who gives and why.

you find that americans up and down the american distribution tend to be very charitable, which is one of the things that makes america beautiful and gives us hope that people can have access to opportunity, because we tend to want to help out our fellow american. i think one of the more interesting things to come to light is there was a study that as inequality increases and times get tougher, people trench in. >> even the wealthy? >> even the wealthy, people tend to be less philanthropic, because they feel less secure. we don't want to create conditions that would hurt people's willingness to be philanthropic. people instead of giving directly money, having people to your house to dinner, there are community mechanisms that i think supplant the charity that you don't necessarily see in the statistics. >> the streaming says:

>> there's an appeal to conscious to be made as was mentioned with the gospel wealth example. there's an interest op ed in the new york tiles by warren buffet's sons arguing that philanthropy is a way for the wealthy to the discharge their horrible obligations. i don't know that gets us very far to make that kind of appeal. there does seem to be a need for

structural change besides relying on people's largesse. sometimes it's a conversation between government and private enterprise, where the people who are affected by these decisions don't have as much a voice in the conversation. i'd like to see that third poll in the triangle be reinvigorated. >> we need to come up with a structure that gives everybody access to have an in cluesive structure. we're not talking about redistribution, we're talking about opportunity and people, we charity creating somebody's opportunity. >> all right. thank you very much. thanks to our guests this evening for a terrific conversation. until the next time, we'll see you on line.

everyone, welcome to al jazeera america. >> we gather to say no more. >> nearly one year later, victims come together as a nation remembers those lost in the newtown massacre. republicans rift, gop leaders take on the tea party as the house votes on a new budget deal. cash crop, billions at state for government and small business. and the voice of change, her take on civil rights and her reflections on nelson mandela. >>