I'm long past knowing what the current state of the economics profession is like, but I think back regularly when I was a graduate student and one of the hot topics was the link between income inequality and growth. Basically, can we tell stories about how a country's income distribution might impact its growth rate?
But the sometimes unstated premise was that income inequality was GOOD for growth (thus justified). You could make a career out of those papers, not ones suggesting the opposite, despite there not being any obvious reason for it to be true. There's no obvious ECON101 type argument here, you have to stretch a bit.
