Four big lies about inequality.

• Author: Reich, Robert
• Position: Essay

Don't listen to the rightwing lies about inequality. Know the truth, and act on it.

Even though French economist Thomas Piketty has made an air-tight case that we're heading toward levels of inequality not seen since the days of the nineteenth-century robber barons, rightwing conservatives haven't stopped lying about what's happening and what to do about it.

Herewith, the four biggest rightwing lies about inequality, followed by the truth.

1 The rich and CEOs are America's job creators. So we dare not tax them.

The truth is the middle class and poor are the job creators through their purchases of goods and services. If they don't have enough purchasing power because they're not paid enough, companies won't create more jobs, and the economy won't grow.

We've endured the most anemic recovery on record because most Americans don't have enough money to get the economy out of first gear. The economy is barely growing and real wages continue to drop.

We keep having false dawns. An average of 200,000 jobs were created in the United States over the last three months, but huge numbers of Americans continue to drop out of the labor force.

2 People are paid what they're worth in the market. So we shouldn't tamper with pay.

The facts contradict this. CEOs who got 30 times the pay of typical workers forty years ago now get 300 times their pay not because they've done such a great job but because they control their compensation committees, and their stock options have ballooned.

Meanwhile, most American workers earn less today than they did forty years ago, adjusted for inflation, not because they're working less hard now but because they don't have strong unions bargaining for them.

More than a third of all workers in the private sector were unionized forty years ago; now, fewer than 7 percent belong to a union.

3 Anyone can make it in

America with enough guts, gumption, and intelligence. So we don't need to do anything for poor and lower-middle class kids.

The truth is we do less than nothing for poor and lower-middle class kids. Their schools don't have enough teachers or staff, their textbooks are outdated, they lack science labs, their school buildings...