How optimal or non-optimal is today's level of economic inequality in the USA? This is the subject for a couple of writing assignments. Are we too equal? Too unequal? About right?

1. For Thursday 17 September: Annotated Bibliography of 8 recent popular column or articles or blog posts on income and/ or wealth inequality. Summarize each item in a short paragraph. At least 5 of the item must have been written by someone with some kind of academic standing.

At least one item needs to be speech by politician, but two or more (form different perspectives) would be desirable.

a. Avoid reviewing the work of people with strong opinion who start from the premise that other points of view are beneath consideration.

b. Avoid reviewing people who think that calling names is an argument. "Piketty is just a Marxist." "Mankiw doesn't care if children starve to death."

Reviews of Piketty's "Capital in the 21^st Century" are one possible source.

Here is one place to start (and biased on the liberal side), but you really only need Google.

http://www.tcf.org/blog/detail/piketty-review-roundup-capital-in-the-21st-century