The Takeaway is continuing our conversation this week on income inequality in America. We’ve covered the Occupy movement, where inequality is a rallying cry, and we reported on a Congressional Budget Office report that highlighted the growth in uneven incomes over the last three decades.We’re taking another look at income inequality this morning, this time from a guest who says Occupy protestors are wrong to focus on income inequality. 

In the discussion of our nation’s growing debt, there’s an issue that may be going largely unreported in the wash of discussion of the federal deficit. All across the country, smaller budgets — county, municipal and state — struggle to pay for underfunded civic services. Is it possible that the services we’ve come to depend on since the New Deal are, in fact, acting as an “architecture of debt?”

Critics of President Obama's health care reform say his plan would create so-called "death panels" to decide which Americans live or die. Supporters say the legislation merely ensures that Medicare will cover consultations with a doctor about end-of-life-issues. We speak with Dr. Laurel Coleman, a geriatrician and palliative care specialist, about helping patients make tough end-of-life decisions. Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, talks to us about the hypocrisy of both the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to talking about health care.

As Governor Sanford stays in the headlines with new comments about his infidelity, Republicans are wincing. Sanford may not have a political future, but does his party? To look at what the recent sex scandals are doing to the Republican Party, Amity Shlaes, columnist for Bloomberg News, talks to The Takeaway.

For more Amity Shlaes, watch her appearance on The Daily Show:

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The Senate will vote today on the passage of the $838 billion economic stimulus bill. And with Senators expected to pass what has been called President Obama’s New Deal, an old debate about the original New Deal is bubbling up again. Did FDR’s heralded program really drag the U.S. out of the Great Depression or was it World War II that put us back on track? The Takeaway is looking at both sides of that coin with Amity Shlaes, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, and Nick Taylor author of American Made, a history of FDR's Works Progress Administration.