What can be done about income inequality?

For all the attention devoted to the widening chasm between the very rich and the rest of American society, perhaps the most urgent question is whether the trend can realistically be turned around within, say, the next two or three decades.

The answer may well be no.

“I am very pessimistic about the capacity of the American political system to redistribute income within a reasonable period of time,” said Robert Solow, the Nobel laureate economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in concluding comments at a seminar on inequality that drew some of the top scholars on the subject to New York last month.

“I simply don’t think that legislation either to support the safety net or to tax high incomes stands a chance in the Congress,” Mr. Solow told me in a follow-up interview last week, particularly given the likelihood that the midterm election will lead to a more conservative Senate next year.

If further redistribution turns out to be politically impossible, the question is whether any better tools are available.