What accounts for the rapid rise of stark economic inequality in the United States?  Is it the natural working of our market economy?  The decline of skills and work ethic for many, while the few strive for education and cash in on creative imaginations?  Or is growing inequality the result of changes in the way power is distributed in our society?  Michael Zweig will explore these questions, and the moral and ethical implications of the answers we settle upon.

Michael Zweig is emeritus professor of economics and founding director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he has received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has a long history of combining rigorous intellectual work, published widely in professional and public journals, with progressive social activism in peace, civil rights, and labor movements.  His most recent book is The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret (2nd edition, Cornell University Press, 2012).  His earlier books include What's Class Got to Do with It?: American Society in the Twenty-first Century and Religion and Economic Justice.