U.S. President Barack Obama calls rising inequality "the defining challenge of our time" and promised to make it the focus of his remaining three years in office. A survey of elites by the World Economic Forum identified "rising income disparities" as the second top global trend for 2014, with 64 percent of Asian respondents saying the economic system in their countries favors the wealthy.
Those pollees are more worried about rising inequality than the rise of China, and rightfully so.
Since the Great Recession began at the end of 2007, policymakers around the world have focused on jump-starting stalled economic engines, even though an influential minority continues to push austerity measures out of misplaced concern about debt. Increasingly, however, attention centers on how wealth is distributed, rather than its mere generation.