University of California professor Robert Reich on Tuesday disputed Republican claims that the wealthy were job creators.

“We have not had this degree of income inequality in America for 80 years and by some measures 100 years,” he told Current TV host Cenk Uygur. “Go back to the Gilded Age of the robber barons. That’s when you find the same kind of concentration of income and wealth inequality and power at the very highest reaches of the United States. We don’t want to go back there.”

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Reich said the upper class wanted to defend their power and wealth, “and that’s why they are sponsoring Mitt Romney, who is the avatar, the sponsor of his class.”

He explained that the strong purchasing power of the middle class was imperative to keep the economy health. While the wealthy tended to accumulate their money, the middle class used their income to purchase goods and services, which drove up demand and lead to new jobs being created.

“If there is not enough money in the middle class and among the poor, then what do you get? You get a stagnate economy,” Reich said.

Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below: