The distance from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Bangkok, Thailand is 8,639 miles

[Fumesucker]

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/income_inequality_in_the_u_s_rivals_that_of_developing_nations/

But then, it depends what one means by the word “distance.”As we discovered in the first installment of this GlobalPost Special Report, by some measures there is not much distance at all.

Take the Gini Index, the scale that economists use to measure income equality, with zero equaling perfect equality and 1 representing absolute inequality in which one person owns everything. Thailand, where Bangkok is the bustling capital city of one of Southeast Asia’s fast growing “Tiger economies,” comes in at .536. The Bridgeport area — Fairfield County — is slightly worse at .539. The two places fall very close in their ranking on the Gini Index as highly unequal.

Put more simply, these are cities where you can move, often within minutes, between the wrenching poverty of the dispossessed and the opulence of the super-rich. The physical distance between rich and poor in these places is small. But for the people who live in Bangkok and Bridgeport, traveling from the lower economic rungs to the higher ones is extremely difficult.

In both of these places, the top 5 percent of the population controls over 60 percent of income. That translates, in Bridgeport’s case, to a median income for that top 5 percent of over $685,000 a year, while the bottom 20 percent, clustered primarily in dismal slums like Bridgeport’s East End, take home about $15,000, US Census bureau figures show.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Reagan Clinton Bush.

That's how many names have been in the whitehouse over the period of time that it took for us to become a third world country.

To go from being a world leader and secure in our resources, to becoming a debtor nation authoritarian corporatocracy.

Deal.

[elleng]

2. Right.

[JDPriestly]

3. Interesting.

Find your city on the gini scale:

http://diversitydata-archive.org/Data/Rankings/Show.aspx?ind=49

Or how about your state:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient