Interesting juxtaposition in today’s NYT between David Brooks and Joe Nocera. Let’s look at Brooks’s column first. In it, he talks about “Red Inequality” and “Blue Inequality.” In short, he’s talking about the kind of inequality people in big cities see, versus the kind of inequality people in smaller cities and towns see. Here’s Blue Inequality:

If you live in these big cities, you see people similar to yourself, who may have gone to the same college, who are earning much more while benefiting from low tax rates, wielding disproportionate political power, gaining in prestige and contributing seemingly little to the social good. That is the experience of Blue Inequality.

What is Red Inequality? It’s the gap between the college-educated and everybody else. Increasingly, the college-educated are far surpassing the rest, not only in income, but in markers of a stable life. They are healthier. They stay married, and form more stable families. They accrue all kinds of advantages because of the culture they embrace, and the culture they disdain. Brooks says all of the attention has been going toward Blue Inequality because the protesters and the big media folks live in big cities. Also:

[B]ecause it is easier to talk about the inequality of stock options than it is to talk about inequalities of family structure, child rearing patterns and educational attainment. That’s because many people are wedded to the notion that our problems are caused by an oppressive privileged class that perpetually keeps its boot stomped on the neck of the common man.

But the fact is that Red Inequality is much more important. The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.

He’s right. It’s easy to scapegoat the one percent, in part because they really do deserve a lot more critical attention, but also because nobody loves them. It’s far, far more difficult to talk about the other things, because that involves making hard judgments about moral and cultural values, which, generally speaking, liberals don’t like to do (unless it’s against the white working class), and about facing how economic conditions can work against a building a culture of strong families and moral stability — something that most conservatives would prefer not to face. You could confiscate all the money of the top one percent and distribute among the bottom 99 percent, and that would do little to nothing to address this deeper culture of inequality Brooks identifies.

For his part, Nocera takes on yesterday’s massive crash of Jon Corzine’s financial firm, and what it tells us about the privilege of the financial elite. Here’s how it starts:

When Goldman Sachs went public on May 4, 1999, Jon Corzine, who was then the firm’s chief executive, held a stake that was suddenly valued at $305 million. So, perhaps, it’s uncharitable to complain about the piddling $12 million severance he was poised to gain if he had managed to sell his current firm, MF Global Holdings, over the weekend.

But I’m going to complain anyway. The idea that Corzine, who single-handedly destroyed MF Global Holdings, was in a position to command so much as a penny in severance is horrifying. It suggests two things. The first is the extent to which “heads-I-win-tails-you-lose” remains the operative concept for Wall Street compensation. The second is that one’s politics doesn’t much matter when it comes to lining one’s pockets. Corzine is an avowed liberal who has decried income inequality and Wall Street pay — but right up until the end, he had his hand out for millions he didn’t deserve.

Notice that? Corzine, the former Democratic U.S. Senator and New Jersey governor, held all the correct liberal positions. Pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-gay marriage. And he even attacked income inequality and Wall Street pay. But look at him. The example of Corzine is an example of how useless conventional politics these days are as a marker of virtue. And he’s also an example of how even though there are deeper and broader problems with inequality in this country, as David Brooks says, the one-percent culture and its entitlement mentality is nevertheless egregious. Do these guys ever lose at anything? Are they even allowed to?