Sarah Jaffe: Why the Rich are Getting Richer!

The "Great Divergence" is a term coined by Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman to describe the trend, over the past 30 years or so, of skyrocketing income inequality in the United States, of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and the middle class growing ever narrower. Timothy Noah's new book by that name examines, in detail, the reasons for that divergence, digging into issues from tax policy to the decline of labor unions to globalization, pulling them all together to paint a picture of three decades of incremental change that have left many of us, at the end, wondering about just what hit us. Noah doesn't just leave us in despair, however. He offers solutions for reversing the trend, including universalizing education and revitalizing the labor movement. Mostly, though, his book is a wake up call for those who haven't yet felt the crisis in their personal lives: We all need to care about income inequality, because whether we like it or not, it impacts our entire society. He took some time to talk to Alter-Net about anger and resentment, about outsourcing and income taxes, student debt and the misperceptions many liberals hold about the labor movement. Sarah Jaffe: I wanted to start with something you said at the end of the book about America being a meaner place today, how that may be fueled by resentments from the Great Divergence. I thought that was an interesting comment to make. Can you talk a little about that? Timothy Noah: Sure. I think what I said was that America was an angrier place in the Sixties, but it's a meaner place today.