In keeping with my previous note about the emergent global aristocracy, here's something. Rich, Poor Live Poles Apart in L.A. as Middle Class Keeps Shrinking:

Demographers at Wayne State University in Detroit recently found Greater Los Angeles to be the most economically segregated region in the country. The study found only about 28% of its neighborhoods to be middle-class or mixedincome, compared with more than half of those in Nashville, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

More than two-thirds of L.A.-area residents live in neighborhoods that are solidly rich or poor, according to the analysis, which is based on 2000 census data. That share has been steadily growing for three decades...

I find John (who I got this link from) Robb's analysis of this sort of thing compelling. Whatever the long-run effects, one of the near-term outcomes of ecoonomic globalization is likely to be that patterns of wealth distribution become more and more normalized worldwide. This is somewhat different from the idea that global wages and standards of living will reach an equilibrium, and it seems to be coming true. Even the EU is seeing movement towards an hourglass-type distribution.

I think this relationship is unstable and likely to produce some significant turbulence if (when?) the current consensual hallucination of international finance is broken. It would be better if we were pushing more towards a bell-curve, but we're not. "Every one of the 100 metropolitan regions [reaserchers] looked at has grown more economically segregated over the last 30 years."

It's a long-term thing that spans generations, but the longer we wait to turn it around soon the more shocking and disruptive the inevitable realignment will likely be.