Wall Street isn’t feeling so bullish about the growing income gap. Via Randy Le’Moine/Flickr

You know it’s serious when even Wall Street begins to take notice. Inequality is the problem of our times. Thanks to economic stagnation, automation, and globalization, the chasm between society’s haves and have-nots widens by the day.

Updated census data reveals that 49.7 million Americans live in poverty. Yet even as poverty goes mainstream, inequality has remained a touchy subject, one that’s polarized the political machine and one that’s been largely ignored by big shot investors, Warren Buffett notwithstanding.

But that’s beginning to change, according to the Wall Street Journal. Why are the so-called “Masters of the Universe” suddenly worried that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer? Because they’re coming to the conclusion that inequality, perhaps predictably, makes everything worse for everyone, even for the kings of the mountain.

The WSJ report cites a recent note by Bill Gross, who runs PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, in which he urges “Scrooge McDucks” to pay more taxes. “Developed economies work best when inequality of incomes are at a minimum,” he wrote, adding that “A fair economic system should always allow for an opportunity to succeed.”

Gross feels guilty that workers are suffering and he’s transparent about how he, and many of his peers, made their fortunes.

“Smoke that cigar, enjoy that Chateau Lafite 1989,” he wrote. “But (mostly you guys) acknowledge your good fortune at having been born in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s, entering the male-dominated workforce 25 years later, and having had the privilege of riding a credit wave and a credit boom for the past three decades. You did not, as President Obama averred, ‘build that,’ you did not create that wave. You rode it.”

Gross, whose fund manages $2 trillion in assets, said on an interview with CNBC recently that he and his wife planned to give away their wealth before they die, what he referred to as the “Andrew Carnegie” pledge.

Others are starting to get the message, including fund managers at a conference hosted by the WSJ last month, where Kynikos Associates founder James Chanos worried that if people believe “the game isn’t fair,” they’ll have less incentive to participate.

Here’s the chart that goes with my inequality story http://t.co/t0d53xvPf2 pic.twitter.com/pxUB6hvgay

November 11, 2013

As it turns out, the situation is far from fair. Over the last decade, average family income for the bottom 90 percent decreased 10.7 percent, while the top 0.1 percent saw gains of 76.2 percent. Overall, the median family income, adjusted for inflation, has declined 6 percent in the last decade.

The primary concern is financial. After all, we’re a nation of consumers, and we can only continue to buy things to keep the machine whirring if your average person has money and a job. Others worry about growing social unrest and political dysfunction, which in turn, will also stifle economic recovery as we’ve seen with situations like sequestration and the debt ceiling debacle. As former Morgan Stanley equity strategist Gerard Minack pointed out to WSJ reporter Justin Lahart, the Gini index, which measures income disparity, moves almost in lockstep with measures of polarization within Congress.

Additionally, power within the financial industry itself has been increasingly concentrated thanks to the extremely advanced (and costly) systems that power high-frequency trading. While Wall Street’s robots can occasionally go rogue, the overall effect of computer-powered trading has been to push ordinary investors farther and farther from the process

Still, even if shots have been fired within finance circles, resistance is expected from those concerned with the bottom line. Corporations are enjoying record profit margins thanks to a lenient tax code and suppressed wages, the report notes. But for the rest of us, we should find some comfort in the fact that the conversation is finally starting in earnest, whether it’s coming from Russell Brand or Wall Street titans.