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In his February 5th appearance on the program, P.J. O'Rourke, the bestselling author and economist, made a point about the distribution of wealth in America that needs revisiting. In response to a question about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and the persistent inequalities of wealth within a system that purports everyone to be equal, O'Rourke responded,

"First place, don't misunderstand these inequities... it may be bad that somebody is really poor down here in the wake of Katrina, and then there's Donald Trump out here on the golf course. It offends us. But don't think that the Donald Trump money over there was taken from the person... When you're building your business, I may stay poor and you may get rich, but you didn't take that money from me. You made that money. You created that money."

P.J. O'Rourke is a very smart man, a pragmatic thinker, a persuasive writer, and someone whose work I respect immensely. However, I have to question the sturdiness of his example in the face of our times. While it's true that Trump, and the legions of super-rich CEOs for whom he has become a masthead didn't literally steal their fortunes, they did create them under some extremely shady circumstances.

The difference between the average CEO's salary, and the wage paid to that CEO's workforce has reached record highs in recent years, while the federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has gone down. To say these things aren't related is to be aggressively naìve of the way our government works, and the way our economy and our society have changed in the last couple of decades. The problem, it seems to me, lies in the present and sweeping absence of moral responsibility.

While Trump and his ilk may have made their money by being savvy businessmen, they did so to the detriment of the growing millions of working poor, like those hardest hit by Katrina, who they actively lobbied to keep that way. There has possibly never been a better time to be rich in America, but with skyrocketing healthcare costs, abysmal public schools, and ever-fewer social programs, being poor seems to be getting harder all the time. I'm pretty sure this wasn't Adam Smith's idea of freedom.

Smith was the founder of capitalist thought, but as O'Rourke points out, he was also a moral philosopher. Call me a cynic, but it's hard to imagine there's much hot debate on moral philosophy going on in the boardrooms of America right now.