As anyone who’s watched a TED talk, read a David Brooks column, or attended an Aspen Ideas Festival can tell you, there’s hardly a single issue currently vexing Americans that the 1 percent doesn’t think can be solved with more “education.” Urban poverty? Education! Stagnant wages? Education! Police brutality? Education! (No, really,  Thomas Friedman basically made this argument.) If you can think of a problem that might be at least mitigated by redistribution, you can bet that there’s some sage of the plutocracy out there insisting that we focus on education instead. Which is a bit ironic, really, because one of the key attributes of the political landscape in the U.S. today — and one that makes fighting inequality, politically, such a heavy lift — is the American people’s ignorance. 

Specifically, their ignorance when it comes to just how unequal their country’s distribution of wealth really is.