Inequality: the social carbon dioxide

From the standpoint of extreme environmentalists CO2 is the perfect 'pollutant' because literally all human activity emits the trace gas.  So the CO2 'problem' can never really be solved leaving enormous scope for coercive state mischief.

Inequality plays the same role socially.  Since human beings are diverse, incomes will vary and envy is always green eyed and monstrous.  It will 'always' be a 'problem' no matter what is done, again allowing much scope to justify state coercion and the rents that derive thereof. It's a crony capitalist pretext to hoover up more of the nation's wealth and power.  The perfect screen to hide Obami incompetence from view.

Matt Contineti has more here.