One of the treasures of the Bay Area Book Festival is the way it celebrates and compels reading, thinking and listening. This ever-evolving event, now reaching its fourth year under the stewardship of indefatigable founder and Executive Director Cherilyn Parsons, is bringing 250 authors to Berkeley this weekend to share their expertise, their insights and their radiant joy in the printed word.

I was given the honor of moderating one of the sessions, on “Income Inequality: A World Gone Mad, Mean and Immoral,” with three distinguished authors: Robert Reich, a weekly columnist in our Insight section and author of “The Common Good”; Jeffrey D. Clements, author of “Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money and Global Corporations”; and Steven Clifford, author of “The CEO Pay Machine.”

So I’ve had a little cram session of my own the past couple of weeks.

In some ways, reading those books is a sobering, even depressing experience in absorbing their analyses of how America has lost its way.

It’s been a most worthwhile reading, and thinking, experience.

Their three books were chock-full of startling statistics about the diminution of the American dream. Here are just three of the many examples:

Reich: Ninety percent of Americans born in the early 1940s were earning more than their parents by the time they reached their prime earning years. For Americans born in the mid-1980s, only half were earning as much as their parents had.

Clifford: In the 1890s, J.P. Morgan suggested a community’s highest wage should be no more than 20 times the average wage. In the modern U.S., CEO pay increased tenfold from the 1980s alone. It is now at 300 to 700 times the compensation of an average worker.

Clements: Eighty percent of political contributions come from just 0.5 percent of the population, a phenomenon that has been exacerbated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which released many of the regulatory shackles on corporate donations.

Reich’s book is the most recent, and the only one that touches upon the Trump phenomenon. As critical as he might be of the 45th president, Reich makes plain that he does not blame Trump for the divisiveness in America and a deterioration of the common good. Trump was a consequence, not a cause, of a disturbing trend.

“The past five decades have ... been marked by growing cynicism and distrust toward all of the basic institutions of American society — government, the media, corporations, big banks, police, universities, charities, religious institutions, the professions,” Reich writes. “There is a wide and pervasive sense that the system as a whole is no longer working as it should. A growing number of Americans feel neglected and powerless.”

In their writings, Clifford and Clements offer levels of supporting documentation on how that happened.

Clifford has a particularly interesting take on one of the sources of income inequality: the outsize compensation at the top. He makes a compelling case that it is unjustified because it has little if any correlation to either performance or demand. In fact, he writes, “there is no market for CEOs. Other companies are not bidding for their services. They are not the same as athletes, movie producers and rap artists, because CEO skills are largely company and industry specific.”

And still, he writes, corporate boards go along with it because they tend to accept the company line that their “superman CEO is worth hundreds of millions.” The result, he argues, is that excessive CEO pay harms the paying companies, impedes economic growth and drives income inequality.

Clifford’s remedy? He proposes a nondeductible “luxury tax,” similar to that in major league baseball, for every dollar above $6 million in executive pay — with all compensation included, whether bonuses, perks or retirement benefits. It would not necessarily stop outrageous CEO deals, but it at least would cause corporate boards to pause to assess whether they are getting value for the investment.

Clements looks at income inequality from one of the sources driving it: political inequality. His book undertakes an exhaustive examination of the effects of the Citizens United decision, which asserted the right of corporations, wealthy individuals, labor unions and other interests to spend unlimited sums for or against candidates.

“Virtually every significant issue now reflects a corporate agenda, with the possible exception of social issues of limited economic impact, such as abortion or lesbian and gay rights,” writes Clements, who advocates a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and restore the ability of our elected representatives to regulate political fundraising and spending.

Reich takes a wide-angle and ultimately optimistic view of the fate of our democracy.

“The moral fiber of our society has been weakened, but it has not been destroyed,” he intones. “We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in politics. We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another by reaching out, and help resurrect civility by acting more civilly toward those with whom we disagree.”

These are values that Americans, from young to old, from left to right sides on the political spectrum, can agree on.

There is something very inspiring about Bay Area residents coming together to read, to think, to speak to one another. And to listen. May the book festival continue to grow and prosper.

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron

“To triumph again over powerful enemies of human equality, dignity and freedom in our generation, we must properly identify the challenge and bring clarity of thinking and action to making our republic work again. As so often before, success and struggle begin with the simplest of propositions: Corporations are not people and every American is an equal citizen.”

— Jeffrey D. Clements, in “Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money and Global Corporations”

“Maybe the shareholders accept the company line that their superman CEO is worth hundreds of millions. Maybe they think the game is rigged, but passively assume that nothing can be done to make a difference. How can we get boards to change?”

— Steven Clifford,

in “The CEO Pay Machine”

“Starting in the late 1970s, Americans started talking less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of our era: from the ‘Greatest Generation’ to the ‘Me Generation,’ from ‘we’re all in it together’ to ‘you’re on your own.’”

— Robert Reich,