What Atrios said:

Romney has said he was unemployed. He's right. He actually does nothing to earn most of his income. He's just in possession of a giant pile of cash. He pays some people to do stuff with that giant pile of cash so it earns a rate of return. And because we are ruled by horrible people who think the lives of the 1% are more important than everyone else, the tax rate on any money that pile of cash earns is much lower than it is on the money earned by people who actually work.

There's a reason why they call it "unearned income." It's because this income isn't earned. And yet, over the past few decades, we've managed to flip our entire tax system on its head so as to favor this sort of income over that earned from doing actual work.

We simply don't value work in America anymore. And we sure as hell don't value workers. Just listen to the Republicans' vehement defense of so-called "job creators," inherent in which is an implied derision of those who merely perform those jobs. As if "giving" somebody a job was an act of charity in itself.

Raise the issue of income equality and Republicans scream "class warfare," and yes, in raising this issue I am advocating a bit of class warfare, if not a war of aggression. But the problem is deeper than that. As a nation, our values are fucked. Ours is a culture that celebrates speculation and derides hard work, that puts a dollar value on everything, and then sorts society from high to low. It is our Calvinist heritage taken to its pathological conclusion, in which the so-called "Protestant work ethic" no longer has anything to do with actual work.