Just when you think you've heard it all....here's a snippet from the transcript of Jack Clark's "Blast the Right" podcast about the effects great inequality has on a society......

"Brian Griffiths is a Goldman, Sachs international advisor. He was recently discussing Wall Street salaries and bonuses. You've probably heard that the financial industry is all set to award itself a record $140 billion in total compensation this year. Goldman, Sachs all by its lonesome will pass out $23 billion in bonuses."

"Griffiths said in defense of such numbers: 'We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all...' "

If you are still confused about trickle down economics, I recommend you check out this site and podcast at http://www.therationalradical.com/2009/11/158-we-have-to-tolerate-inequality-to.html; however, if you don't have time to listen to or read the entire transcript of his podcast, here's the part I found most interesting:

A book, already out in the United Kingdom, will be publihed next month here in the United States.  It's called "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger."  http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies-Stronger/dp/1608190366

The authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, have a website, http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/.

What they have found, is that economic inequality within a society is the single most powerful determinant of whether that society will have more or less of a host of social ills.  

No one can summarize their research better than they in their own words.  From their website:

Great inequality is the scourge of modern societies. We provide the evidence on each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage births, and child well-being. For all eleven of these health and social problems, outcomes are very substantially worse in more unequal societies.

We have checked the relationships wherever possible in two independent test beds: internationally among the rich countries, and then again among the 50 states of the USA. In almost every case we find the same tendency for outcomes to be much worse in more unequal societies.

As the book's publisher put it, in reference to the United States in particular:

Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.