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With debate heating up over inequality and social mobility, it's time for yet another airing of one of the least productive debates in American politics: whether it's up to individuals or society to ensure economic success.

Quite like Hollywood's, the glitterati of the university depends on a semi-translucent support crew. There are papers to grade, lab-rats' necks to snap, low-level requisite classes to teach, exams to proctor, online discussions to moderate, etc. As U.S. college enrollment has nearly tripled between

Remember having ‘the talk’ with your parents? That clumsy conversation forced upon you as a pre-teen when you desperately tried to avoid eye contact while muttering “I already know this, Dad” and wavered back and forth between feeling embarrassed and grateful? Get ready for a role reversal.

Conservatives like to argue that curbing the outsized wealth of the top 1 percent wouldn't do anything to increase economic mobility or reduce inequality. Rich Lowry of the National Review nicely summed up this thinking in a column the other day:

Judge Rhodes ordered the city and the banks to renegotiate their settlement which would have paid the banks 75 cents on the dollar. Despite a unanimous city council vote against it, the Emergency Manager is currently pushing the city to enter into another financial deal with Barclays to pay off the

Discussing the President and Congress on MSNBC, Demos Vice President of Policy and Outreach Heather McGhee noted that Was

The federal judge overseeing Detroit's historic bankruptcy abruptly halted a trial Wednesday, ordering the city to renegotiate a proposed settlement with its creditors -- major banks owed hundreds of millions of dollars who are among the first in line to be repaid.

One familiar excuse for inequality is to argue that the problem is not that the people at the top are making too much money. Rather, the "problem is declining or stagnant wages for those Americans who are not thriving in the 21st-century economy," as Kevin Williamson argues today over at National

A judge's ruling that the city of Detroit can move forward with bankruptcy and strip the city's public workers of their modest pension benefits will have a devastating impact on Detroit's middle class — many of whom are African-American — and the city's ability to rebuild a strong and sustainable

People who end up with damaged credit — often through no fault of their own — can be shut out of jobs by employers who hold their credit histories against them.