To mingle, meet, and know: marginalization and the privileged

Recall that the end of the most significant recent analyses of global patterns of income inequality, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic (1999: 51) asks how such levels of inequality can possibly continue. “Such a high inequality,” he says, “is sustainable precisely because the world is not unified, and rich people do not mingle, meet, or even know about the existence of the poor other than in the most abstract way.”