Income inequality is a huge issue, and neither party has a good solution to it. Republicans support trickle-down, which doesn't happen. Why is a rich guy going to want to give up some of their wealth to employees under them? There isn't an incentive, and when unemployment exists and people can be easily replaced there is no reason to improve the labor market with higher salaries and incentives to stay with a company. The left is delusional on it, increasing taxes on businesses really only hurts the employees, the lost revenue due to increased taxes is not going to come from the people at the top or revenue, it's going to come from "restructuring" the business through laying off workers, increasing work burden on those not laid off and benefits/pay cuts or raise freezes. Even with the economic downturn I don't believe the guys at the top have made less money, if anything that's gone up and it's only pushed for a different corporate culture and practice of screwing over your workforce and getting away with it because people are desperate for the job. Raising taxes on the rich doesn't help much either, unless the revenue on that goes directly into the pockets of the poor/middle class. I don't see the government saying "hey, you make between 0-250k a year, here's a free check courtesy of the fat cats." They are going to waste that money on gov bureaucracies and inefficient social programs that don't do much, if anything, to address poverty or income inequality. The poor stay poor even if they get a $10 increase in their EBT or a subsidy on health insurance.
What needs to happen are incentives to provide for a healthier labor market. The rich and those at the top have all the power when it comes to how businesses are run, and their focus is their wealth and the value of their company's stock. They want to produce their good/service for as little cost possible and sell it for as much as they can to ramp up revenue that goes to the top and the shareholders. Their focus isn't on a prosperous workforce or wanting to bring any of that revenue back on them. The other problem is those employees have little or absolutely no representation or decision making power. They don't get to make the decisions, see the numbers, or partake in the conversations regarding "restructuring" or any other measure that's a fancy term for screwing over the employees. Employees should have that representation by law, there should be employee delegates that act as members of the board or high stakes shareholders and it should be a sizable representation compared to others on the panel that make those decisions. The decisions made shouldn't be how to funnel the revenue to those in that meeting, it should be to funnel the revenue to those working for that business and to those at the top, the key thing would be those at the top would see less of that, and rightly so.
The other thing that needs to be done is tax incentives. Decrease gov spending, cut taxes for corporations and allow them to have more money to redistribute among their workforce. If anything what the government could do is increase corporate taxes while providing numerous tax cuts and incentives behind treating your workforce ethically and ensuring practices that put more of that revenue wealth back into the pockets of the workers. Say a company pays a higher wage than average for similar jobs, they get a tax cut. Say they provide a better benefits package and vacation/sick time, they get a tax cut. Say they have a better system for raises or give revenue in the form of bonus checks, they get a tax cut. In the end, if a business runs itself in such a manner they will have a lower effective tax rate through taking advantage of these tax incentives, they're going to need a financial reason behind providing such things because the fundamental principal behind the decision making is always going to be increasing profits and greed, what the law could do is limit how far one can go with such motives and flip it around to where the greedy decision is actually to provide more for your employees because at the end of they day you'll have more money from a lower tax rate rather than running an unethical business model that screws your workforce that will be subject to crushing and crippling taxes if they don't change.