That’s because the surging income gap often masks a narrowing difference in the actual consumption experiences of the rich and the rest of us. 'At the turn of the 20th century, only the mega-rich had mobile phones or cars,'. 'But mobile phones are now in all universe, even as mobile phone inequality continues to grow.'... where rich follows i-phone and poor follows only mobile phone.
Massive inequality makes life difficult for poor people to rise up, especially because of issues like personal appearance and social intelligence.
Rich people can afford braces, face lifts, and nice clothes. Poor people, by and large, cannot. This makes it visually obvious who is poor and wealthy.
And rich people socially interact at different level than poor people, reflecting their past experiences. Conversation will not only be difficult, but almost like two foreign languages given the differences in daily living.
This is important, because in addition to the education, hard work, resilience, risk taking etc. always wisely suggested for poor people to improve their lot, poor people will ultimately have to interact person-to-person with wealthy people for interviews, financing, advice, and more on a path of personal economic growth.
If the rich have expectations of physical appearance and social manners that the poor find hard to meet, that's one more obstacle on the way to becoming rich, or as jouris smartly pointed out, believe that it is possible.
One more incentive for the poor to storm the barricades, but I don't think that will happen as long as people can keep their smartphones on and their auto payments/rent met.
Especially if pot becomes legal. Then the poor will be too stoned to realize that the barricades are there at all. :)
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