So one thing I learned last night is that the right has a new meme: inequality is the fault of the government — you see, it’s all those overpaid government workers.

I made the mistake of replying on the substance, which is that once you correct for education, government workers are paid about the same as their private-sector counterparts; basically, government workers are school teachers, which means that they need college degrees.

But there is a better answer, and a teachable moment here, which gets at the real nature of inequality in America. It’s not about overpaid teachers.

Let’s start by looking at the real winners in soaring inequality — the people who not only make incredible amounts of money, but get to pay very low taxes (and if you suggest closing their loopholes, you’re just like Hitler.) According to Forbes, in 2012 the top 40 hedge fund managers and traders took home a combined $16.7 trillion billion.

Now look at those supposedly overpaid government employees. According to the BLS, the median high school teacher earns $55,050 per year.

So, those 40 hedge fund guys made as much as 300,000, that’s three hundred thousand, school teachers — almost a third of all high school teachers in America.

OK, teachers get benefits, so their total compensation cost is higher than their wage, so maybe it’s only 200,000.

But you should keep numbers like these in mind whenever anyone tries to shift attention from the one percent (and the .001 percent) to Americans who aren’t even upper-middle class.