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A day before fast food workers in one hundred cities around the nation went on strike demanding living wages, President Barack Obama gave a speech about the growing income gap between the rich and poor in the United States.

Obama chose to give his speech in Anacostia, one of the most poverty stricken neighborhoods in Washington DC whose predominantly African American residents face an unemployment rate of 20%. He addressed astronomical CEO pay, the abysmal minimum wage, weakening unions, childhood poverty, the folly of trickle-down economics and the importance of healthcare.

While the President called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time” and something which “drives everything I do in this office”, critics were quick to point out the hypocrisy of a President who has failed to reign in the recklessness of Wall Street, remove corporate loopholes, deal with growing student loan debt, stem the tide of foreclosures or end the funneling of trillions of dollars to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

GUEST: Max Fraad Wolff, an instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University and senior analyst with Greencrest Capital.