I think it's very useful to distinguish three roles of inequality, or three sorts. One is holding everything else equal; the other two are equality of opportunity and social welfare. I'm much more worried about anti poverty than i am about income disparity. And in many developing countries poor people cannot afford to go to school. You can easily have a situation in which there are credit constraints then you don't get an education. In some ways we're all victims of our own success as well as others who haven't done anything wrong.
Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his new paper co-authored with James Robinson, "The Rise and Fall of General Laws of Capitalism," a critique of Thomas Piketty, Karl Marx, and other thinkers who have tried to explain patterns of data as inevitable "laws" without regard to institutions. Acemoglu and Roberts also discuss labor unions, labor markets, and inequality.