Jay W. Richards  Editor's Note: This column was co-written by
Anne Bradley, PhD, who serves as Vice President of Economic
Initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics.
All-American rocker Bruce Springsteen has taken to the pages of
Rolling Stone magazine to lament the existence of income
inequality in our country today: “You cannot have a social
contract with the enormous income disparity — you’re going to
slice the country down the middle. It’s not going to hold.”  His
viewpoint seems to be shared by more than six in ten Americans
who think that “one of the biggest problems in this country is
that more and more wealth is held by just a few people,”
according to a 2011 poll by the Public Religion Research
Institute. The Occupy Wall Street campaign only contributed to
this sentiment, leading ordinary Americans to talk about the
wealthy “one percent” and the presumably destitute “ninety nine
percent.”  The reality is, almost all this is the result of
economic illiteracy rather than careful moral