We've known for some time now that it was happening. How could we not? I mean, it's not as though we haven't been able to feel the widening gulf – to see the distance that has been growing between us these past years.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not naive enough to believe that things were all rosy before they turned sour. They weren't. However, in the last three decades, something has shifted dramatically within us. Within all of us. A shift that has reached a breaking point:

The Gini index tells us we're falling off the rails. For not only does the data suggest that income inequality is growing faster in America than almost anywhere else in the world, but that the gap as it stands now already places us near the bottom of the global community:



Income inequality is more severe in the U.S. than it is in nearly all of West Africa, North Africa, Europe, and Asia. We're on par with some of the world's most troubled countries, and not far from the perpetual conflict zones of Latin American and Sub-Saharan Africa. Our income gap is also getting worse, having widened both in absolute and relative terms since the 1980s.

In America, we're growing apart. We have been for some time. And unless our governing class is pressured to make a slew of drastic policy shifts by, say, movements such as Occupy Wall Street or massive voter revolts, we will continue

to grow apart

until

there is nothing left to do

but

break.



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Follow me on Twitter @David_EHG

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