During the Clinton years there was an ongoing debate amongst his economic team over whether the unequal distribution of the fruits of growth was something the government need worry about, or whether the only important goal was growth itself. In Obama's interview with Leonhardt he makes it clear that his team, which includes alumni of the Clinton administration (one of whom, Larry Summers, was a forceful proponent of the just-grow-the-pie argument) has arrived at a broad consensus: acute inequality is a problem that government must address.
When I first started having a round table of economic advisers... what you discovered was that some of the rifts that had existed back in the Clinton years had really narrowed drastically... I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can’t just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.
Alert Plumber Joe!
But seriously... note that the focus is on 'opportunity'. In other words, this can't be fixed via redistributive taxation: the key thing is to increase social mobility, which has gone backwards over the last twenty years.
(The interview is really worth reading in full, by the way. It ranges over the financial crisis, the economy more generally, education and health care, and - without wishing to add to the 100-Day Obama-gush, but there's no avoiding it - Obama displays a phenomenally impressive depth of thought, and clear sense of priorities, at every stage.)
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