Income Inequality Rages but Poor Don't.

Byline: Don Bauder

Dec. 1--The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but the poor aren't raising hell about it.

It's true all around the world.

"Half of humanity lives in poverty," said an article last month in Le Monde Diplomatique, "and incredible as it may seem, these billions of wretched of the earth are keeping politically quiet."

Violence in places such as the Middle East, Chechnya, Sudan, Congo and the Ivory Coast pales by comparison with revolts three decades ago, according to the article. An exception may be the political victories by left-wingers in ailing Latin American countries.

In the United States, economists of every stripe agree that since the 1980s, the gap …