Hello, friends, and welcome back to the brand new Bill Press Pod.

This is only our third week, where we dive into the big issues facing us today with some of the best experts in the country.

And one big issue that everybody's talking about today is income inequality.

President Obama, in fact, once called it the most important problem facing this country.

And in one way or another, all the Democratic candidates have some plan on how to deal with the income gap,

or the wealth gap, as they call it.

Before we evaluate what they're offering, however, we really need to understand the issue,

and nobody's better prepared to walk us through the issue of income inequality than Jared

Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

and former chief economist, then Vice President, Joe Biden.

Jared Bernstein, good to see you.

Thank you for inviting me.

Thanks for joining us, you know, so we hear so much talk about and have for so long about

income inequality.

Let me just ask you to start off.

How bad is it?

How real is it?

It's very real.

And whether it's bad or not is a matter of your perspective.

I do think it's extremely problematic in lots of ways. I think it's responsible for many of the

problems we face today all the way from slower macroeconomic growth than we'd like to see to

political upheaval, which I'm sure we'll get into.

...