For those of us who worry that the growing global gap between rich and poor is a critical threat to the planet, this has been a glorious week. On this crucial issue, it appears, the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

In a high-profile study released Monday, the international development agency Oxfam warned that the world’s richest one per cent will soon own more than the remaining 99 per cent. This confirms other recent studies indicating that growing income inequality is seriously hampering global economic growth, leading to a significant reduction of the middle class and showing every sign that it will only get worse if something dramatic is not done. And that’s just for starters.

So why is this great and glorious news? Because, finally, this issue is now being publicly framed and presented in a way that only the greedy or ideological among us can fail to understand.

Here are three of the most recent warning bells:

This week’s Oxfam study, titled Wealth: Having it All and Wanting More, indicated that the 80 wealthiest people in the world own nearly as much as the 3.5 billion poorest people. According to Oxfam’s executive director, “the scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering.”

An OECD study last month, titled Focus on Inequality and Growth, warned that new research shows that when income inequality rises, economic growth falls. It said that the gap between rich and poor is at its highest level in 30 years.

A study released in November by the TD Bank, titled The Case for Leaning Against Income Inequality in Canada, said that rising inequality is bad for the economy because lower-income families have less to spend. Its author warned that forces currently at play could push income inequality even higher.

Not unlike the response to climate change, the issue of income inequality has been disparaged by many in the political and media elite in North America and Europe. The ridicule heaped on the “Occupy” movement that began in New York City in 2011 and challenged social and economic inequality was probably the most glaring recent example.

But equally extreme has been the enduring belief in the otherwise discredited Reagan-Thatcher “trickle-down” or “voodoo economics” of the 1980s, which argued that by improving the economic interests of the rich, the poor would eventually share in the benefits. It did not work then, and it is not working now.

The growing research that identifies income inequality as a genuine threat to global economic stability is becoming too persuasive to ignore. And perhaps most tellingly, whether at this week’s World Economic Forum at Davos or as a key theme of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, the next stage of the debate seems to be turning to the central question: What can we do about it — now?

There is no shortage of ideas. Even though most mainstream political parties, aided and abetted by the media’s mostly conservative chattering class, have been complacent and dismissive of the urgency of the issue, serious people — such as Oxfam — have done serious work in crafting solutions to reduce income inequality.

It is time for these ideas to be debated.

These include raising the minimum wage and creating a minimum annual income so that families have enough to live on and their spending benefits all of the economy; shifting the tax burden from income and consumption to capital and wealth; an international commitment to eradicate global poverty by 2030; investment in universal health care and education; promoting policies that provide women with a fairer deal; and an aggressive campaign against tax dodging. The list goes on.

The timing of this new debate is opportune. Elections will be held this year in the U.K. and Canada, among other countries, and the road to the next U.S. presidential campaign has already begun.

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It would be a great and glorious year if the issue of the income inequality became front and centre in these political campaigns.