Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.

Not all private equity people are evil. Only some.

Asset bubbles have happened even without not-so-easy money. And, in a depressed economy, where alternative uses of money are not great, people are going to bid up the prices of profitable corporations and stuff like that.

It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.

Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.

Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.

Yes, over the centuries economic progress has reduced some gross disparities - modern Americans are relatively unlikely to simply starve to death (though it can happen), so in that sense the gap between rich and poor has narrowed. But the question isn't whether society is, in some sense, more equal than it was in 1900. It's whether it is radically more unequal than it was in 1970. And of course it is.