Income Inequality-- real or imagined?

Listened to Sirius radio today as I drove around my hometown of Austin, Texas. Caught a public radio discussion from New York City on the election of Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of New York.  Mr. de Blasio wants to get free pre-school education for all New Yorkers in an effort to level the playing field as regards income and opportunity inequality. He's concerned about affordable housing. Only the rich can afford to live in Manhattan these days. But he's careful not to hurl invective at Wall Street, the place oozing money and wealth and a big source of the city's economy.

Income inequality has been with us forever. Is it really that different than it has ever been before? Everybody will scream in response-- yes, the numbers indicate clearly all the gains in wealth have been made at the top of the pyramid, the "top 1%," a group nobody claims to be part of. The oft-repeated truism states all societal gains have fallen into the laps of the very rich. But, as my hero Marshall McLuhan, the media philosph, states-- "it is wealth that creates poverty."  That's not a direct quote despite the quotation marks. The level of wealth has become more visible thanks to the power of modern communications and we do not like seeing how poor we are by comparison!

The perspective of a 19th or 20th century analysis does not suffice. The digital revolution has changed the world. The Arab Spring occurred because the Middle East could see their plight more clearly and didn't like what appeared before their eyes. The dictators shivered as the citizens tweeted out their feelings and societies went up in flames. The situation is messy and painful, no doubt, but the revolution has begun. Not only is the revolution being televised... it's being streamed or tweeted or whatever.

Meanwhile back in the United States... every kid has a cellphone and doesn't want to lose that connectivity. Hence, crime rates are way down because nobody can abide by the thought of going without a cellphone in a prison cell-- no matter how great the police departments think they are doing.

The next chapter is mysterious no doubt. One expert on employment stated there are two distinct economies and employment pictures--1)  the high tech economy, where things are humming and companies need more workers, and 2) the rest of the economy, with high unemployment and people looking for work.

New York City may or may not reflect an American reality or even a global reality. Wealth will follow on the heels of knowledge and education and eventually get distributed more evenly. The extreme productivity and wealth of our society has to go somewhere. Nature abhors a vacuum. Dealing with wild amounts of accumulated riches is a problem we can solve. Other, very real problems like climate change threaten all of humanity. The climate problems demands unprecedented levels of global cooperation-- a challenge posing risks more precipitous than anything previously experienced in human history.